Syfy Looks at Ellison Project

The day after the premiere, you may be asking yourself what act would dare follow Sharknado?

Who else?

Harlan Ellison told readers of his Forum this week:

On Monday we were visited by Karen O’Hara from the SyFy Channel in NYC, who wanted to discuss a possible linkage of Ellison to a still-in-talking-stage Ellison Creating A Story In A Window Then Turned into SyFy Movie Spectacular.

If you think there’s no connection with Sharknado, think again! O’Hara spent part of her visit watching Dreams With Sharp Teeth, the Ellison documentary.

Defiance Renewed

Syfy’s Defiance is go for a second season, extending a collaboration between the show and its online game which to date has garnered 1 million registered accounts.  

Defiance has been a massive investment for Syfy and Universal Cable Productions. Billed as a “transmedia experience,” the series is tied to a massively multiplayer online video game. The combined price tag of the freshman season and the video game is a cool $100 million.

The show is set in a vastly changed American Midwest:

Set in the near future, Defiance features an exotically transformed planet Earth, its landscapes permanently altered following the sudden – and tumultuous – arrival of seven unique alien races. In this somewhat unknown and unpredictable landscape, the richly diverse, newly-formed civilization of humans and aliens must learn to co-exist peacefully. Each week, viewers follow an immersive character drama set in the boom-town of Defiance, which sits atop the ruins of St. Louis, Missouri, while in the game, players will experience the new frontier of the San Francisco Bay area.

David Klaus is intrigued by the show’s use of his hometown but wishes the culture had more depth:

Their “St. Louis” underground is a strange parallel to the real thing, and they’ve made local geography and cultural mistakes, but these are mixed in with a few things right. The sf elements are cliched, with each race being a cultural stereotype w/everyone from the race all being the same. Instead of Klingons=warriors, Ferengi=shady businessmen, it’s Irathians=mysteriously religious, Ibogenes=super-scientists, Liberata=cynical domestic servants, Castithians=schemers. Literal racism.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

Michael Mallory Signing in Glendale

Pop culture writer Michael Mallory will sign his latest book, The Science Fiction Universe…and Beyond: A SyFy Channel Book of Sci-Fi, at Mystery & Imagination on December 2 at 3:00 p.m.

Arranged chronologically, showing the progression of sci-fi over the decades, and delving into interesting back stories and trivia, this volume includes a variety of classic films and television shows, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Twilight Zone (1959–1964), Doctor Who (1963–1989), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Star Wars, Episode IV—A New Hope (1977), Alien (1979), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007), Battlestar Galactica (2004–2009), and many others.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Syfy: Not Only the Name Has Changed

When Syfy changed its name from the Sci-Fi Channel it was not expected to take long for the company to begin offering more non-genre programming. Syfy President Dave Howe recently told Advertising Age:

“We don’t want to be in the niche space; we want to be in general entertainment…” Science fiction, fantasy and comic-book movies are, of course, already fairly general entertainment. They account for seven of the top 10 highest-grossing movies every year, Mr. Howe said. But Syfy now wants to offer more as well.

Syfy will premiere three new reality shows on July 15 with paranormal themes. If successful, Syfy will eventually have a broader appeal like cable enterprises A&E and Discovery.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the link.]

SyFy, *sigh*

The change has happened: SyFy is the new name of the SciFi Channel. Or as io9 put it, they’ve changed the name to a typo.

Will there now be lots of Abbot-and-Costello style comedy routines about SciFi-no-I’m-talking-about-SyFy? Are you kidding? First, fans will have to wear out the even more obvious joke. Advertising Age reports:

“According to research done exclusively for BNET Media by TNS Cymfony, syphilis jokes account for about four percent of all commentary about Syfy.” Ouch.

Proud to be numbered in that four percent is the Crotchety Old Fan, but I can’t fault his constructive and helpful approach. Click on the link and you’ll get the complete “CDC communiqué” for dealing with this new outbreak:

What is the treatment for SyFy?

SyFy is easy to cure in its early stages. A single intramuscular injection of penicillin, an antibiotic, A single blow to the head with a ballpeen hammer will cure a person who has had SyFy for less than a year. Additional doses blows are needed to treat someone who has had SyFy for longer than a year…

I predict Crotchety will be forced to post more medical advice assisting his readers who fall out of their chairs laughing.

The SyFy announcement also reveals why an independently-owned sf media site changed its name to Airlock Alpha:

In the 24 hours since NBC Universal announced it had a new name for SciFi Channel, it seems they have found themselves in a tug of war with Airlock Alpha founder and site coordinator Michael Hinman on where exactly the “Syfy” name came from. Last month, Airlock Alpha came into existence following a sudden rebranding of the site that had carried the name “SyFy” in some form or another for more than a decade. The move shocked many readers, and was described at the time as nothing more than a marketing move by the site as it prepares to launch Inside Blip…

Hinman has declined to disclose what he was paid for to give up the SyFy brand, but has made it clear that it was significant.

“All I can tell you is that the amount was far more substantial than anyone who was simply looking to get into the science-fiction news business would pay, even me,” Hinman said. “So we knew it was someone extremely well capitalized.”

[Thanks to David Klaus, Andrew Porter, plus Michael J. Walsh and Stu Hellinger via Smofs, for links used in this story.]