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Doux News: March 16, 2014

This Week: The Resurrection of Lestat -- The Death of Game of Thrones -- SF on TV -- This Week in Casts -- Upcoming on Amazon -- This Week in Rocket Cats


The Resurrection of Lestat

Anne Rice will release a new vampire book in October: The Prince Lestat about, one assumes, the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt who made her famous. I haven’t read any of Anne Rice’s books, although of course I watched Interview with the Vampire when the film came out. I’m curious to see if The Prince Lestat brings Rice some new fans, as her recent foray into, and retreat out of, Christian angel-based narratives seems not to have done so. Even if new fans don’t discover the author who inspired later sexy vampires like Spike and that sparkly guy from Twilight, I’m sure Rice aficionados will be happy to find out more about Lestat’s unlife.


The Death of Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones masterminds David Benioff and Dan Weiss will reportedly end the show in either the seventh season (according to Entertainment Weekly) or possibly the eighth season (according to Vanity Fair and the HBO programming president). According to Benioff, “It feels like this is the midpoint for us. If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point.”

Benioff also told Vanity Fair that he and Weiss spoke with George R.R. Martin about the end of the book series, of which only five novels out of the planned seven have been published: “So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character” to find out not only what happens, but how to set up what happens in an appropriate fashion. Martin elaborated on their conversation, explaining that he “can give them the broad strokes…but the details aren’t there yet. Martin is also “hopeful” that the show will not catch up with the books, but acknowledges that “it’s alarming” how quickly the show is moving compared to the more glacial pace of his own writing.


SF on TV

Frederik Pohl’s Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning book Gateway will be adapted into a drama series for an as-yet-undetermined network by, among others, the Dino De Laurentiis company (responsible for the delightful Hannibal and the less-delightful Dune adaptation from the 80s). Pohl’s novel, about humans using alien technology to find untold riches, sounds rather interesting, especially since the author Jo Walton describes Pohl in unabashedly complimentary terms: “He packed his stories with ideas in the Campbellian mode and then gave them an innovative twist that made them memorable.”

While that project winds its way through the treacherous corridors of production, the SyFy channel has something to tide us over: the new miniseries Ascension, set to air in November. According to the AV Club, Ascension “is set on a spacecraft carrying hundreds of people who fled Earth during the Cold War to colonize a new world. About 50 years into the journey, a young woman is mysteriously murdered, and everyone on board is a suspect. It’s like Star Trek crossed with Murder On The Orient Express.” I’m totally going to watch that.


This Week in Casts

Josh Duhamel (Las Vegas) will join Dean Winters and Kal Pen in Vince Gilligan’s upcoming Battle Creek. The premiere of that show will be directed by Bryan Singer.

Jennifer Beals will hop on the afterlife bandwagon for an upcoming medical drama from TNT in which she investigates the possibility of life after death.

• As JD explained in his review of this week’s episode, The Originals is losing one of its own: Claire Holt (Rebekah) is leaving the show.

Adrian Pasdar (Heroes) will guest star in at least one episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD as Glenn Talbot.

• The totally delightful John Cho will join Karen Gillan in ABC’s upcoming comedy Selfie.


Upcoming on Amazon

Of the five adult-audience (in the sense of being for grownups, not porn) pilots that Amazon screened for its audience of totally qualified random people, four will be made into series to air on that network commercial behemoth: The After (from X-Files creator Chris Carter), Transparent, Bosch (starring Titus Welliver), and Mozart in the Jungle will all be ready for our online viewing pleasure at some date yet to be determined. Here are Chris’s thoughts on those series—and since I trust her more than Random Amazonian, I’m going to pass on Carter’s latest foray into the supernatural.


This Week in Rocket Cats

Unique at Penn, the University of Pennsylvania library blog, released a series of images from late-medieval and early-modern manuscripts that feature images of rocket cats. Yes, rocket cats: cats with artillery strapped to their backs, to be used in warfare. Rocket cats. I’m seriously not making this up. Rocket cats! See above, and this one below, and even more available here:


The rocket-cat trend appears to be predominantly German, with many of the manuscript images coming from the 15th and 16th centuries. The cats were thought to be a useful way to “To set fire to a castle or city which you can’t get at otherwise,” according to one manuscript. Although we don’t know if the rocket-cat siege tactic was ever used, it seems unlikely to be of much use, as the cat-weapons designer clearly didn’t realize that cats never, ever go where you want them to.

5 comments:

  1. Selfie sounds awesome. Both Cho and Gillan will be great. And Boch gets made into a series..Yay.
    Battle Creek sounds cool too.

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  2. I used to be deeply into Anne Rice and was a huge Lestat fan. And then she lost me. The vamp books got boring and I had absolutely no interest in her religious books. I'm not sure how I feel about a return to Lestat. Is she doing it because of pressure from publishers and fans or because she really wants to do it?

    Those cat illustrations are marvelous, but mine are now pressuring me to get them for their birthdays.

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  3. I am astonished that Amazon is taking four of the five pilots to series. The one they are not, Rebels, is the one I thought had the most potential. Oh well. Of the four, the only one I might watch an episode or two of is Mozart in the Jungle and that won't be for the story, it will be for the music.

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  4. I loved the Anne Rice vampire books,but then she messed them up and I lost interest. Won't read this one I think. Maybe I'll just loan it from the library. I'm hoping she returned cause she really wanted to, not because she felt obliged/or wanted more money.

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  5. I loved the early Anne Rice vampire novels, then they all turned into clones of each other and it got boring. *sigh*

    As for George RR Martin, I wouldn't say he writes at a glacial pace, that would be unfair to glaciers! More like the pace of evolution... so sloooow! :o( I think there's a chance we'll get Winds of Winter before the series catches up, but no way will the last book be done before the series! Not at this rate anyhow...

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