Story Wonk: Magicians S1E3

The Magicians S1E3: Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting

First Aired 2/1/16

Directed by

   Scott Smith

Writing Credits

Created for TV by

   Sera Gamble

   John McNamara


Written for TV by

   Henry Alonso Myers

Story Editor

   David Reed

Based on The Magicians by

   Lev Grossman

Narrative Drive:

This episode is all about the stakes. It drives home the message that the world of magic is dangerous. Just having the talent for magic can kill you … or even worse. In some ways you begin to wonder if learning magic is even worth it. Just casting a spell can corrupt a person into a monster, overpower a person into a monster, kill a person accidentally, or just change you into someone else. This isn’t a Harry Potter version of magic. With each revelation we are left to wonder which of these many characters will end up as monsters or dead or changed. The suspense starts subtly but it will last throughout the entire series.

Another driving force that lasts through the entire series is the conflict between the Brakebills magicians and the hedge witches. This conflict provides tension in a myriad of ways in different episodes. We are encouraged to pick a side in this dispute, but which side? Both sides make eloquent arguments. The back and forth tug provides the tension.

This episode provides foreshadowing for a number of upcoming episodes. We learn what a Niffin is. Margo’s enigmatic personality begins to come more in focus. We see Penny struggle with hearing too much of what is in other people’s minds. We learn that Quentin knows all the words to some Taylor Swift songs.

Writer Take Away:

• Stakes: You just can’t have tension or narrative drive without stakes. For the stakes to feel real, they must be shown. Thus Charlie foreshadows his sister’s fate.

• Conflict: To provide grinding tension throughout the story provide two groups whose approach to the issue at hand is equally valid. The reader will feel obligated to side with one or the other side. However, the two sides provide a push-pull sensation as the advantages of each side come clear. No one need “win” this conflict. The point isn’t who is right, it is that the two sides can’t agree.

• Series: Not the type of series that results in a number of seasons or novels in the same setting but the plot structure series. This is the type of structure J. K. Rowling uses to create her stories. She has several subplots going throughout each novel and she keeps track of which ones appear in each chapter. The result is that it keeps the reader asking what will happen to a number of characters. In this episode we see the series about Niffins, Emily Mainstream, and Travelers. When these issues come up again it creates excitement for the reader. For a comprehensive course on series see Stuart Horwitz’s three books on the subject.

Character Arcs:

This episode provides a lot of the foundation for the rest of the season. It exemplifies each of the characters strong points and their flaws.

Quentin: Quentin was the hardest for me to figure out. Initially his flaw was his unwillingness to grow up and take adult responsibility. It was also his inability to fit in with society. He didn’t grow out of those flaws as much as coming to Brakebills negated them. 

So now what is the flaw that he needs to overcome? In this episode he runs into Julia with the hedge witches. He admits he didn’t tell anyone at Brakebills about her nor will he. He tells her it is revenge for the way she treated him. She did seem to tease him sexually and to pester him about taking on adult attitudes. So perhaps Quentin does have a vengeful streak. But it also seems that Quentin is almost afraid that Julia will somehow work her way into Brakebills. Since coming to Brakebills himself he has been accepted and made friends. Is he worried that if Julia comes to Brakebills his friends will be so struck by her they will abandon him? Or perhaps he just enjoys

feeling special in a way Julia is not “special.” Either way, he is hoarding magic from his former best friend. 

Quentin’s flaw, then is selfishness. He wants magic for himself. He needs to feel special, or more special than Julia.

Julia: Still acting as the foil for Quentin, Julia’s trajectory is the opposite of his. Where he is making friends, she is ignoring her friends. Where Quentin has a budding romance with Alice, Julia alienates her lover. Julia is sinking into the pit of obsession. No wonder she uses addiction as her excuse with her boyfriend. You do have to admire her determination though. She has pursued magic at all cost, but her strength of will has slid over a cliff into obsession.

Alice:

 "Use magic in anger, and you will harm yourself much more quickly than you will harm your adversary. There are certain spells... if you lose control of them, they will change you. Consume you. Transform you into something not human. a Niffin, a spirit of raw, uncontrolled magical energy.”—Henry Fogg

Alice’s strength is her magical ability. She outstrips everyone with her ability. Her weakness is her overconfidence. Even unexperienced Quentin can see that what she plans will result in another death—likely her own.  Alice is unwilling to see not because love of her brother blinds her, but because her over confidence in her abilities blinds her. In some ways she is the opposite of Julia. Julia was also overconfident until she was rejected by Brakebills. That rejection broke her mind and set up the obsession to have magic no matter the cost.

Alice also shows us that she has a trust issue. Despite Margo’s best efforts Alice will not trust her or become friends with her.

Eliot: 

“Hedge witches. Amateurs. Magical D-leaguers. Sad and desperate people. Once one of 'em offered to blow me for a spell. It was barely worth it.”—Eliot Waugh

So far Eliot has seemed the most organized and mature of the students. Eliot finally provides us with a believable character flaw. He is an Ivy League Snob. He also gives us a hint of something else. He is in search of the missing book because without it there will be an investigation of the cottage party culture. Eliot seems very fearful of the end of the Physical Kids Parties. Why? Is he afraid of going back to being a regular student rather than the host of the most incredible parties on campus. Is that what props up his ego?

Margo: This is her second attempt at befriending Alice and she has failed again. Her strength may be gossip. Her weakness is that gossip doesn’t provide opportunity for deep friendship. She may be smart, beautiful, clever but she is not trust-worthy to Alice. She is able to get men’s attention but she can’t quite make a female friend.

Penny: Fogg forces Penny to say he needs help with learning to control traveling. Penny is unwilling to accept help. That might be quite a flaw in this environment. The flip side, is that he is self sufficient. When he travels to Asia, he isn’t waiting to be rescued, he is finding a way back home. That is a pretty big plus for a magician.

Kade: She is resourceful. She uses battle magic to get into the Physical Kids Cottage. Her flaw is her betrayal of the Physical Kids. She stole a book from the cottage. Somehow hedge witches are controlling her and forcing her to steal for them.

Fogg: He seems to be concerned for all of his students. He isn’t necessarily able to keep them safe as they are being picked off in each episode.

Writer Take Away:

• Strengths and Flaws: This episode painted each character with a strength and a corresponding flaw. The flaw will be overcome by lessons learned and growth as the story progresses. What are your characters strengths? If you take that strength too far, what does it turn into? Think about Julia. Determination and intelligence are great strengths but taken too far they become obsession. For Quentin he loves magic and has a natural talent for it. But now he is hoarding it away from Julia. How can you show your character’s strengths and flaws? How can different characters bring out the best and worst in your characters?
• Give everyone a part to play. The books are much more centered around Quentin. The TV series allows for more points of view and so the support characters are getting richer development. That fills the series with even more fascinating plot lines and characters to root for. 

Theme

”Being a magician has always been, in part, about accruing power. Power over yourself, the elements. Power over the future, the very world that exists around you But power, as you all know, does not come cheaply. There are reasons we teach this curriculum precisely the way that we do. Skipping around, focusing on all the wrong things, lack of guidance... These are all extremely dangerous. There are certain energies, certain spells, which are far too powerful for one magician alone. If you lose control, it will turn against you. It will kill you. It will consume you. Change you into something else.”—Dean Fogg

“Magic is not something to be dicked around with.”—Dean Fogg

Power

Figuring out the theme of a fantasy story frequently revolves around figuring out what magic represents to the author. In the last episode we were told magic is pain. In this episode Dean Fogg goes out of his way to tell us magic is power and thus it is dangerous. Human beings have an odd relationship with power. We are all obsessed with it to some degree but we also recognize it has negative side effect. It takes a great deal of storytelling to constantly remind us that too much power is undesirable. Therefore power and its corrupting side effects are a common theme in stories.

In the real world this is a little like money. Money also represents power. A little is a good thing but too much has a corrupting influence.

Hedge-Writers

In this episode Quinten learns about the long standing conflict between Hedge-Witches and Classically-Trained Magicians. 

The term hedge witch is an homage to the wise women of old who often lived on the outskirts of villages, beyond the hedge. One side of the hedge was the village and civilization, but on the other lay the unknown and wild. Hedge witchcraft is usually practiced by solitaries, and involves deep study of plants and the natural world. The hedge witch learned her practices from older family members or mentors, and honed her skills through years of practice, trial, and error. Hedge witches typically find magical intent in routine, day to day activities, and living mindfully.

The entire subplot of Hedges vs. Brakebills reminds me of something I am experiencing in reality right this minute. I came to Arizona a few years ago just as the state wide writer’s group collapsed. I am older and the sole financial support for my family. I could not quit and go to the university setting to get an MFA in writing. I have always had to rely on writing groups and websites and books to teach me the craft of writing. So I joined with others to recreate a writing group in the state of AZ. There is a university in my town, so I invited students and teachers from the university to come to meetings or hold workshops. We were snubbed by those connected to the university. 

I get the feeling that hedge witches are writers who write fantasy or other genre works. Did Lev Grossman come across the attitude that only classically trained recipients of an MFA who write literary works should be able to address the human condition in fiction? It feels like that to me.

Women Don’t Need Rescuing

This is a theme that will be resonant throughout the entire story, at least in the TV series. It wasn’t as prominent in the books. The trope for fantasy fiction usually puts men in the driver seat. They do all the interesting things and act as heroes in the end. Women are just love interests or there to be rescued.

The first couple of episodes lulls you into thinking that the show will follow that well worn path. But then Kade jumps in and confronts the Beast with battle magic.

As Sera Gamble said of the Magicians in April, 2019:

“Sometimes being a hero means admitting that your girlfriend’s a better magician than you! In order to move the story as far and as deep as we want to on The Magicians, we have to make it really clear to the audience that we’re not interested in telling the same old fantasy story, and that it’s actually about the people you might expect to be off to the side.”

The Magicians is putting that trope on its head. With each episode in each season the women are becoming the ones to watch as they act heroically when the men back off. Most of the women eventually rescue themselves and that is one of the reasons I really loved the TV series.

Ep#7: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

Hi fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. I just put up a new episode of Speculative Fiction Picks:
Ep#7: The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Ep #6: The Three Body Problem by Lui Cixin

Hi fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. I just put up a new episode of Speculative Fiction Picks:
Ep #6: The Three Body Problem by Lui Cixin.

Ep#5: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Hi fans of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror. I just put up a new episode of Speculative Fiction Picks:
Ep#5: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

Ep#4: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The post Ep#4: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison appeared first on Speculative Fiction Picks.

We’re winding up the 2015 awards season. The major speculative fiction award, the Hugo Awards were announced on Aug 22 in Spokane, Washington. Congratulations to Chinese author, Liu Cixin for winning the Best Novel category with The Three Body Problem. Originally published in 2008 in China, Tor republished the English version translated by the author’s husband in 2014. This is one of the few short list novel I haven’t read yet, so I will see if we can fit it into the schedule before the end of the year. Liu Cixin recently published another book, The Wondering Earth.

Rumors and Reports:

Speculative Fiction Awards Watch:

Guardians of the Galaxy took best Long Form Dramatic presentation and Orphan Black beat out Dr. Who, Game of Thrones, Grimm and The Flash for best Short Form presentation. Interestingly, several of the categories received no winner because attendees voted for the “no winner” over any of the nominees.
George R. R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones, held his own awards ceremony after midnight at the Glover mansion where he awarded the Alfies, named in honor of Alfred Bester, who won the first ever Hugo Award with his novel, The Demolished Man. The awards were made out of ’50s hood ornaments and given to authors who would have been nominated if works from the Sad Puppy / Rapid Puppy slates hadn’t filled the ballot. Among the winners of the Alfie were John Joseph Adams, Liz Gorinsky, Patrick Rothfuss, Ursula Vernon and Jo Walton.

Martin presented special Alfie awards to Marko Kloos and Annie Bellet, who were nominated due to the slates but withdrew their works from consideration; to Eric Flint for his “eloquence and rationality” in writing about the controversy; and to Robert Silverberg, who has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony.–Locus Magazine

“This year all of us were losers,” Martin said.
Next year, WorldCon will be in Kansas City, and Helsinki will host WorldCon in 2017.
On August 17 Sidewise awarded The Enemy Within by Kristine Kathryn Rusch best alternative history novel and  Kiss from a Queen by Jeff Provine won the Baen Fantasy Award.
On September 9, Dragon Con took place in Atlanta, where the best speculative fiction podcasting awards, The Parsecs Awards, were announced. No, we didn’t even rate. There were a lot of categories, so please link to the site for further details.

Author News:

President Obama presented Stephen King with a National Medal of Arts on September 10. The medal is “the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government.”

Some sad news. On Aug 30, director and writer Wes Craven died at age 76 of brain cancer, at his home in Los Angeles.

Wesley Earl Craven was born August 2, 1939 in Cleveland OH. He studied English and psychology at Wheaton College in Illinois, and earned a master’s in philosophy and writing at Johns Hopkins. He briefly taught college before turning to cinema, and he worked on more than 50 features as a writer, director, or producer. With writer Steve Niles he created comic book mini-series Coming of Rage (2014).–Locus Magazine

Best known for horror films, including The Last House on the Left (1972), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The People Under the Stairs (1991), and many others.
He published one novel, the SciFi thriller Fountain Society (1999), about a scientist who has his brain transplanted into a cloned body.
Margaret Atwood has a new novel coming out this month, The Heart Goes Last.

Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a ‘social experiment’ offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their ‘Alternates,’ the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.

Stephen Baxter is coming out with Xeelee Endurance. Jim Butcher is putting out  The Aeronaut’s Windlass. Nancy Kress has The Best of Nancy Kress coming out. Queen of Steampunk Cherie Priest‘s new novel is Chapelwood.
And weirder than weird Salman Rushdie of The Satanic Verses has a new book in the genre, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights.

In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub–Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.

Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world.
Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Dunia’s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights—or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, where beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse.

In Reality Based News:

Ever try telling a computer you were late to work due to traffic. Hitachi has introduced an Artificial Intelligence to manage their workers.
Forty years after the Apollo Moon Mission ended, scientists are still parsing the data. For example, they recently discovered over 200 moonquakes on the our nearest neighbor.


UC Berkley recently started a free, web-based, 8 week course to teach positive psychology and the research based methods for living a happy and meaningful life.

TV and Film:

Really exciting stuff this month. One of my all time favorite books got optioned by WGN America. WGN will be developing Cold War-era novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky for Sony Pictures Television. In 1979, Andrei Tarkovsky adapted the novel into the film Stalker which wasn’t quite a success. In 2012, the novel received a new translation from Olena Bormashenko which piqued new interest in the book. The TV series adaptation will be written by Jack Paglan (Transcendence), and will be directed by Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones).
Deliciously tense and brilliantly plotted, Roadside Picnic takes place after our first encounter with aliens. The aliens briefly inhabited several areas of Earth, but made no effort to engage or even notice humans. The vacated areas they inhabited, called zones, are strew with alien garbage. The things left behind have mysterious, unpredictable and very dangerous properties, causing governments to cordon off the zones, while poachers are irresistibly drawn to the areas despite the danger.


The first book of Octavia Butler’s trilogy Lilith’s Brood, entitled Dawn, was optioned for TV by Allen Bain’s  production company. Some of you may know the book by its previous name, the Xenogenesis series.

The sci-fi tale tells of humanity’s last survivors who are saved by an ancient alien race just before the destruction of the earth. They are given the choice of either mating with the aliens to create a new mixed species, or die as the last humans.–Deadline Hollywood

Like all Butler’s work, Lilith’s Brood is thoughtful and very creepy. It will be fascinating to see how they recreate the scenes for television, because much of the novel only happens in the minds of the characters.
The Martian opens Oct 2:


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?Having finished The Martian, Ridley Scott is moving on to work on Prometheus 2. Rumor has it that after the Aliens prequel-sequel he will work on a sequel to Blade Runner. Blade Runner was adapted from Philipe K. Dick’s novel,
Spielberg has signed Olivia Cooke to play Art3mis, in Ready Player One, novel by Ernest Cline.

Set in a dreary, quasi-dystopian world in which its inhabitants spend as often as they can logged into a virtual world called Oasis, Ready Player One follows young gamer Wade, who is one of many embarking on a quest within the game’s world to find the fortune that has been hidden with its virtual confines by its deceased creator. Cooke will be playing Canadian blogger Sam – or ‘Art3mis’, as she goes by in Oasis – who ends up joining forces with Sam.–SciFiNow

The movie is expected to premiere in December 2017.
Also in 2017, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is expected to air on Starz. The series is currently in preproduction with  director David Slade and producer Bryan Fuller from Hannibal.
Paramount Pictures picked up on option Cory Doctorow’s dystopian future, Little Brother. The story is about a seventeen year old, who is interrogated by Homeland Security. When the teen is finally released he becomes instrumental in a techno-geek rebellion against the new US police state. The second book in the series, Homeland, was released in 2013 and more are on the way.

The first season of The Man in the High Castle, adapted from a Philip K. Dick novel, will be available on Amazon November 20. The pilot was excellent and is already available at Amazon. Man in the High Castle is an alternate history in which the Axis countries win WWII and divide the US among themselves.
Netflix is picking up the abandoned British series Black Mirror and they will produce a Season 4 in the franchise.
The BBC is adapting a four-part series of The City and The City by China Mieville. This unusual novel tells the story of  Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. Assigned to investigate the mutilated body of a foreign student dumped in a wasteland, he uncovers evidence that the deceased girl was involved in the political turmoil between the twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma. The two cities occupy the same physical space. Citizens of each city are forbidden from seeing each other and have a duty to wipe any accidental contact from their memories. The rule is enforced by a department known as “Breach.”
And finally, fans of the game Risk can now play a Star Wars version that allows them to conquer an entire galaxy.

Showcase Novel: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely–Or Not.
If you were suddenly appointed dictator, would it change you? Would you rule with an iron fist? Or have you been the victim of power enough times that your internal compass would not allow you to be unjust?
Emperor Varenechibel can’t stand the sight of his fourth wife. Everything about her, from her dark goblin skin, to her peculiar religious practice grates against him. But, being the emperor of all the Elflands, he had to marry the woman for political reasons. Shortly after she bares him a son, the emperor banishes her and the boy to some remote corner of the empire, where she eventually dies. The boy, now eight, is placed in the care of a distant cousin, also banished from court.
The youngest and least loved of the Emperor’s sons, Maia Drazhar knows life with his sadistic cousin is the only one he will ever lead. Born with dark gray skin and all but forgotten, he will never be welcome at court.
Until a horrible accident leaves the emperor and all his sons dead, except Maia.
Unschooled in the complexities of court life, Maia is thrust into the world of power and intrigue. Everyone wants something. Everyone has an ulterior motive. No one is his friend. He must decide quickly who he can trust, and who he can rely upon. Should he rule with aloof indifference to protect his own emotional wellbeing, as other emperors have done, or forge a new path? Will he even be allowed to become a knowledgeable and just leader for the people of this vast and diverse empire?
Beautiful prose and extraordinary world building, complete with several invented languages and cultures, make The Goblin Emperor a joy to read. The backdrop is sort of like mixing Paul Atreides of Dune with Octavia Butler’s Kindered in a Steampunk Downton Abby and throwing in Elves and Goblins. The novel is filled with wonderful, funny characters, each brought to life by Addison’s loving hand. The protagonist, Maia, is instantly likable and carries much of the success of this novel. You can’t help but root for him. Although some criticize the novel as being plotless, the story is heavily character driven and so the movements of the book are mostly about internal struggle. For me, the plot is very present.
The reading is light and hopeful but Addison touches on many of the darker issues of our time. She includes racism, sexist, homophobia, economic justice and class struggle, but she does not dwell on any of them. She is a little heavy handed with the theme but the nature of power is a theme worth considering.
Addison said during an interview on the Sword and Laser Podcast that The Goblin Emperor will not have a sequel, but I hope she reconsiders. I would be more than happy to revisit the Unthelenase court and see how my favorite characters faired.
Katherine Addison is the pseudonym for Sarah Monette. As Sarah Monette she published her first novel, Mélusine in 2005, but she was publishing short stories long before that. This novel was picked up by Tor and published last April. It was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula. 

Episode #2: Annihilation and the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer

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Rumors and Reports:

Awards Watch:

Influx by Daniel Suarez  won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel of 2015.

Sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society, the Prometheus Awards, honor outstanding science fiction/fantasy that “explores the possibilities of a free future, champions human rights (including personal and economic liberty), dramatizes the perennial conflict between individuals and coercive governments, or critiques the tragic consequences of abuse of power – especially by the State.”

Influx, depicts a government so concerned about political destabilization and potentially dangerous innovations that inventors who don’t follow the edicts the Bureau of Technology Control are sentenced to a high-tech prison. The prisoners band together to avert a new technologically dark age.

This was Suarez’s second Prometheus award nomination. Kill Decision, was a Prometheus Award finalist in 2013.

Other Best Novel finalists were The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin, Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett, and A Better World by Marcus Sakey.

Locus Magazine, the magazine for Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom, had its bigawards night in May. Ann Leckie took Best in Science Fiction for Ancillary Sword, (Orbit US; Orbit UK). The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Tor) was awarded Best Fantasy Novel. Best Young Adult Novel went to Half a King by Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Voyager UK) and the Best First Novel was awarded to The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert (Sourcebooks Landmark).

Author News:

Several big authors in the genre put out new books last month. Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter published book #4 of The Long Earth Series: The Long Utopia. Stephen King produced a sequel to Mr. Mercedes calledFinders Keepers. Terry Brooks published The Darkling Child: The Defenders of Shannara. Finally, Jim Butcher put out Working for Bigfoot.

On a sad note, Tanith Lee, the author of more than 90  novels and 300 short stories in speculative fiction, died at age 67.

Lee published her first novel in 1975 and was a prominent writer in the 80s. In 1980, Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for her novel Death’s Master. In 1983 she won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from both the World Fantasy Convention AND the Horror Writers Association in 1984.

She was know for pushing the envelope in the genre, and is credited for innovations that lead to modern YA speculative fiction.

In the News:

The big news this week is Pluto. On its way to deep space, the New Horizons space probe gave us sharp, full color pictures of the secretive Lord of the Underworld. The demoted planet apparently doesn’t hold a grudge and sent back a postcard bearing a picture of a heart. Scientists have named the heart-shaped region Tombaugh Regio, after the astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930.

So far the photos have shown us that Pluto is red like Mars and geologically active, probably from volcano’s, like Earth. The surface has icy 11,000 ft mountain peaks. Filtering out the red color, scientists could see the heart is distinctly broken in two, a peachy western lobe, and a mottled blue eastern lobe, showing more geological difference than anyone anticipated.

Pluto is in a binary dwarf-planet relationship with its largest moon Charon.

Pictures of Charon held their own surprise—a dark northern pole, which may harbor hydrocarbons, the building blocks of life.

The New Horizons team invited the public to help name the new features discovered on Pluto. The features are being named for popular dark lords and inhabitants of the underworld in mythology and literature.

Some names already used:

• Meng-p’o: Buddhist goddess of forgetfulness and amnesia, tasked in the underworld with ensuring reincarnated souls will not remember their previous lives.
• Cthulhu: an elder god from HP Lovecraft mixing features of man, octopus, and dragon.
• Krun: one of five Mandaean lords of the underworld, nicknamed “Mountain-of-Flesh”
• Ala: Odianai goddess of earth, morality, fertility, and creativity.
• Balrog: monster able to shroud itself in fire, darkness, and shadow, and the apparent killer of Galdalf the Grey in the Lord of the Rings.
• Vucub-Came and Hun-Came: Mayan hero-twins and death gods.

You can check out the full list of yet-to-be-assigned names here.

Meanwhile, the features on the mini-moons each have their own themes. Styx, ferryman for the dead, will be collecting river gods. Nix, personification of the night itself, will take on all the other night deities. Kerbeos, the hellhound of Hades, will be collecting canines from literature, mythology, and history. Finally, the many-headed Hydra will take on legendary serpents and dragons for its naming scheme.

As for making these names official, that’s up to Pluto’s nemesis, the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

TV and Film:

Last episode, I talked about John Scalzi and forgot to mention Scalzi and FX are currently developing Redshirtsfor a TV series. If you’ve never heard of Redshirts here is what the back cover says:

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Redshirts is the winner of the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

As a life-long Trekkie, I can’t wait.

Finally, Scalzi just published the end of the Old Man’s War with The End of All Things. So that should be the end of John Scalzi for a while.

A&E is planning a 10 episode sequel to 1976 movie The Omen.

We last saw Damien, the Antichrist, when he was a murderous child.

Now, he is an adult and apparently remembers almost nothing about his childhood. Struggling with his self-identity and presumed fate, he acquires more power while defending himself from those who discover his destiny.  Damien stars Bradley James in the title role and currently has no date set for its premiere.

In 1984 the much beloved film The Last Starfighter was so far ahead of it’s time, the film industry just could not do it justice. Now technology has had a chance to catch up.

The film’s original writer, Jonathan Betuel, is currently developing a Starfighter-themed show called The Starfighter Chronicles with Surreal.tv. Not a sequel or remake, the new show is described as “a serialized story about alien law enforcement” with a focus on “instilling a moral code.”

Still in the early stages, the producers plan scenes inside a cockpit or flying through space to be enhanced with virtual reality technology.

Surreal.tv co-founders Rick Rey and Andy Vick are hoping the show will launch virtual reality entertainment in a way so many other projects have failed to do.

Starz finally Accepted Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for a TV series.

“I am thrilled, ‎scared, delighted, nervous and a ball of glorious anticipation. The team that is going to bring the world of American Gods to the screen has been assembled like the master criminals in a caper movie: I’m relieved and confident that my baby is in good hands.”–Neil Gaiman

SyFy picked up Incorporated, a series from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. “Set in a future where companies have unlimited power, Incorporated tells the story of executive Ben Larson, forced to change his identity in order to infiltrate a cut-throat corporate world, to save the woman he loves. In the process, he will take on the entire system – with deadly consequences.”

IM Global TV will adapt Kurt Vonnegut’s satire Cat’s Cradle. “The story involves the children of a Nobel laureate physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and a substance called ice-nine, an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature.”

Marc Guggenheim (Arrow) and Bryan Singer (X-men) are working on a movie version of Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for 20th Century Fox. Unfortunately they are retitling the movie version Uprising. Really? One of the best titles in SciFi history changed to one of the most generic? My expectations for the movie are already low.

iO9 has come out with a guide to Doctor Who for those of us who are not officienotos and came late to the franchise.

Showcase Novel: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Did you tune in to the hit TV show Lost each week because the smoke monster had your imagination in it’s murderous grip? Good news, the Lost island has landed on the Southern Reach and joined forces with The X Files.

Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X Trilogy reads just like an early episode of Lost.

Decades ago, a portion of the southern coast of the U.S. was mysteriously cut off from the world by a force field. Just as mysteriously, a doorway in the field recently opened, allowing entry into the zone now called Area X. The first expedition into Area X goes well, but reports none of the previous inhabitants survived. The second and third expeditions end in disaster with all the members dead save one. The sole survivor reports Area X has become as malevolent and mad as any serial killer.

The first book in the series, Annihilation, covers the twelfth expedition. Unable to use their names within Area X, four women known only by their job titles struggle to survive the treacherous and alien terrain within the estranged coast.

The second book, Authority, covers the government bureaucracy in charge of protecting the world from Area X–in part by keeping the events within its boundaries secret.

The third book, Acceptance, continues the twisted tale of the effects of Area X on the wider world.

Eerie and enigmatic, Area X becomes it’s own character within the novel, leading the pack of flawed and possibly insane characters. You get the feeling while reading that things, evil things, are happening just outside your peripheral vision. Always the quest to know “why” drives the expeditions, and the reader, deeper into the convoluted ecology of the coast and the secretive bureaucracy of the Southern Reach.

Like the last decade’s TV series, each mile along the trails within Area X asks more questions than they answer. Unfortunately, just like the TV series, don’t expect to get all, or perhaps any, of your questions answered by the end of the series. I definitely felt like the whole series left me–arrrgh . . .

oof . . .
. . . bang . . .
. . . crunch. . .