(1) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE. You’re invited to “Meet the authors and translators longlisted for the International Booker Prize”. Includes Solenoid author Mircea Cărtărescu (below at left).

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to mangia mussels in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons in Episode 249 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

It’s time for lunch in Baltimore’s Little Italy with David Simmons, author of the horror diptych Ghosts of East Baltimore and Ghosts of West Baltimore. His short fiction can be found in Brave New Weird Volume Two, Kaleidotrope, and This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs. His novel Eradicator will be released later this year.

We discussed how he manages to give such dramatic performances during his public readings, why his answer when asked to describe his genre of writing is “Baltimore,” the way discovering the novels of Donald Goines changed his life, why his wife was responsible for his first short story being written and sold, how he hopes reading him will have you feeling as if you’re in a frenetic car chase, why for him the villains always come first, the extensive research he needed to write Baltimore right, why his rapping career is a thing of the past, the reason a story’s opening line is so important, and much more.

(3) BEWARE THE IDES OF GALLIFREY. “Comic-Con Museum in San Diego set to open ‘Doctor Who’ exhibition this weekend” reports the San Diego Union-Tribune. It opens March 15.

San Diego fans of the long-running BBC sci-fi series “Doctor Who” can step inside the TARDIS, get face-to-face with a Dalek and see various versions of the Sonic Screwdriver when the touring exhibition “Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder: Where Science Meets Fiction” makes its U.S. premiere Saturday at the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park.

For the uninitiated, “Doctor Who” is a long-running sci-fi TV series that debuted on England’s BBC in 1963. It aired continuously until 1989, then took a yearslong break until it was rebooted in 2005. Originally designed as a children’s show, it has been adopted by legions of fans of all ages from around the world…

…The “Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder” exhibit features an extensive array of original props and sets from the show, as well as behind-the-scenes resource materials from what is now the world’s longest-running sci-fi show. Besides exhibit displays, there are interactive digital displays and kiosks where fans can learn about the Doctor’s adventures. There are also screens where visitors can learn about the real-life science that the show’s writers incorporate into the show, including the concept of time travel, artificial intelligence, DNA manipulation and cloning….

…The exhibition was launched in 2022 in Liverpool, England, and has since visited Scotland and New Zealand. The San Diego visit will run through March 2026, so it will be open when San Diego Comic-Con returns July 24-27. The “Doctor Who” TV series usually has a panel and merchandise booth at the annual sci-fi convention….

(4) STARSHIP TROOPERS REBOOT? [Item by John A Arkansawyer.] Back to the source material, the story says, and not the first movie: “New Starship Troopers Movie in the Works from Neill Blomkamp” at The Hollywood Reporter.

Johnny Rico is coming back to kill some more bugs.

Columbia Pictures is plotting a new Starship Troopers movie, setting District 9 filmmaker Neill Blomkamp to write and direct an adaptation of the classic sci-fi novel story by Robert A. Heinlein.

Blomkamp will also produce the feature alongside Terri Tatchell, his partner and wife who co-wrote the South African filmmaker’s District 9 and 2015 outing, Chappie.

Published in 1959, Troopers ostensibly told of an interstellar war between Earth and a host of bug-like aliens, and focused on a rise of a military serviceman named Johnny Rico. But the story had other things on its minds, like exploring the strengths of life in a military society and such ideas as having to perform service in order to have voting rights.

While the book won a Hugo Award for best novel and has been quite influential in sci-fi literature, some quarters described the book as fascist. It was that tone that was satirized in the 1997 movie from Paul Verhoeven, the director of Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Verhoeven was over-the-top in his depiction of the military jingoism and propaganda, fetishized costumes, and highlighted Nazi influences….

… Blomkamp’s take is not a remake of the Verhoeven movie, and sources say the goal is to go back to the source material.

Blomkamp most recently directed Gran Turismo for Sony Pictures, a critical and commercial success that grossed over $122 million worldwide….

(5) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Robocop series (1994)

Thirty-one years ago the Robocop series was first broadcast this week in Canada. (It would be four days more before it was broadcast in the States.) Stripped largely of the violence and cynicism of the film that it was based on, it was intended to appeal to children and young adults. Ed Neumeier and Michael Miner who scripted the first RoboCop film were back for the pilot here. They scripted a sequel to the movie but Orion went in a different direction — elements of that sequel are largely the pilot here. 

Richard Eden is Murphy / RoboCop. And given its target audience, playing a prominent role is Sarah Campbell as Gadget, an eight year-old girl. All the characters in the film were renamed into new characters, i.e. Anne Lewis becomes Lisa Madigan. Why so? The iron law of copyright meant that all of the main characters except RoboCop/Alex Murphy had to have their names changed. So The Old Man is the chairman and so on. For the same copyright reasons they could not use ED-209 or refer to it. 

They had planned on reusing the gun from the film, and had permission to do so, but Canadian Customs decided it looked too much like a real weapon which meant it couldn’t come into the country. So they designed and constructed a new, lighter one which worked better according to the actor who had handled the other prop weapon. 

Cinespace studios in Toronto devoted fifty thousand square feet of permanent sets to resemble old Detroit. This was not a cheap series to do, was it?

So how was critical reception for it? The Variety review at the time said that, “Series has a good chance of succeeding because, on the basis of the opener, it’s brave enough to amuse instead of intimidate. There’s a lesson there.” 

The Houston Chronicle like it quite a bit saying it “works well as a mass-market show as it offers action, as opposed to violence. And it’s ironic humor, though not as hard-edged as the movies’, has a sly, subversive bent.”  

Final word goes to the Boston Globe: “This is a far campier and cartoonier RoboCop than the original. Even when the wit is blunt, the writing is snappy; and the acting is just broad enough to poke a little fun at itself.”

None of these reviews helped. It lasted but twenty-two episodes of one season as it never found an audience. Cancellation was actually announced just barely into the season.  Interestingly they did a one-off film, Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement, which was decided on late in the season.

Like so many other genre series, it’s streaming on Peacock.  For once, I can tell you they are legally up as well on YouTube provided you chose the ones up there by Rallie who did the series.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

• Brewster Rockit has the earliest kind of audio book.
• Dark Side of the Horse shares its top three tear-jerkers.
• Dinosaur Comics thinks our proverbs aren’t competitive.
• Mother Goose and Grimm suspect drugs.
• Reality Check ruins the ending.

(7) BUY BOB CLAMPETT’S STUFF. Van Eaton Galleries is holding a Bob Clampett Collection auction on March 22-23. Meantime you can see the lots in a free public exhibition from March 4-20, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm, at their location — 12160 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91504.

They also will sell you a print copy of “The Bob Clampett Collection Auction Catalog” for $50 (or you can view it gratis as a flipbook at the link).

A softcover catalog for our March 2025 “The Bob Clampett Collection” auction. The gorgeous collectible reference catalog measures 11″x8.5″ and features lovely full-color imagery for nearly 1000 amazing animation artifacts available in the auction, detailed across 350 pages.

(8) FIRE, ASH, AND TEARS. [Item by Steven French.] The Guardian adopts a somewhat flippant tone in reporting James Cameron’s claim that his wife sobbed for four hours after watching the third installment in the Avatar franchise: “Having a bawl: why Avatar 3 will reduce you to a sobbing husk (just ask James Cameron’s wife)”.

Can you feel it? If you’re paying enough attention, and you have your spirit tuned to the frequencies of the planet, then you’ll be able to sense that the old Avatar machinery is starting to crank up again. The third instalment of the series, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is set for release in December. And this means that James Cameron finds himself saddled with a familiar task; in just nine months he has to try and motivate people to see a film from a franchise that they’ve already forgotten about twice before now.

The bad news is that these are incredibly expensive films to make. So expensive, in fact, that Cameron previously stated that the second film needed to be the third highest grossing movie of all time just to break even. And, just to compound things, that film was such an incomprehensible mishmash of confused mythology, nondescript motivation and vague characterisation that this one needs to be something really special to get bums on seats….

But the better news is that James Cameron has been here before. He knows exactly how to get people excited for Avatar movies now, and by God he’s going to pull out the big guns. So, how is Cameron going to make you want to watch Avatar: Fire and Ash? Simple, by promising you a sustained emotional breakdown.’

(9) PLAGUE YEAR. Inverse reminds us “30 Years Ago, Dustin Hoffman Made Disaster Movie So Ahead Of Its Time It Seemed Like Sci-Fi”. (You mean it wasn’t?)

When Outbreak was released 30 years ago, Wolfgang Petersen’s tense, often terrifying (if conventionally melodramatic) film seemed like the sci-fi movie it was. Surely a global outbreak of something as devastating as the movie’s mutant Ebola-like virus couldn’t really happen, could it? Three decades later, Outbreak seems prophetic, not just in its scenario of a rogue virus escaping from Africa and making its way into the U.S., but also in the reactions of government, business, and people alike to such a catastrophe. Outbreak is something of a mirror on society that, three decades later, is worth taking a deep look into….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John A Arkansawyer, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day John Hertz.]