An unexpected message from The Doctor, well worth a listen…
The Doctor Calls…
Category: Critical Mass News
News items which go out to a monthly newsletter
The Fallen Doctor
Chris Chibnall has shared a short story on the Doctor Who site that reveals the specifics of the Doctor’s post-regeneration survival. The story “Things She Thought While Falling” reads like a flavor document meant to help Whittaker internalize the then-new Doctor’s voice:
That’s interesting, she thought. I seem to be an optimist. With a hint of enthusiasm. And what’s that warm feeling in my stomach? Ah, I’m kind! Brilliant.
Last and First Men
One the most emotional world premieres at the upcoming 2020 Berlin International Film Festival is bound to be “Last and First Men,” the directorial feature debut of the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.[…]
Jóhannsson’s only directorial feature, “Last and First Men” is an adaptation of his touring multimedia project of the same name. The movie — shot on 16mm black-and-white film with “Victoria” and “Rams” cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen — played in concert halls, accompanied by Jóhannsson’s score with a live orchestra. The feature film playing at Berlin includes the composer’s original score and narration from Tilda Swinton….
— from Mike Glyer’s file770.com
Crit Mass Mar 4th: the Night Watch series
This month, Roman looks at the novels in the best-selling russian series by Sergei Lukyanenko. What started as a trilogy is now a hexology, but he’s just looking a the setup in the first two novels: Night Watch and Day Watch. Some of you might recall the movies based on the novels…
It’s 6:45 Wed 4th March for a 7pm start at kappy’s tea & coffee merchants,
22 Compton St,Adelaide.
Come along and tell us about your favourite stand-alone fantasy story!
Stand alone fantasy novels
City of Bones by Martha Wells
Martha Wells has recently entered the spotlight with her delightful, award-winning science fiction novella All Systems Red, but she’s also got a fabulous backlist. City of Bones wars with Death of the Necromancer for my favorite Martha Wells novel, but City of Bones undoubtedly wins the place of “Best Standalone by Martha Wells.”
— Sarah Waites, in her list of 10 standalone Fantasy Novels on Tor.com
Original Illustrations From Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires
Jules Verne was a ridiculously prolific author, publishing more than 90 novels, short stories, non-fiction books, essays, and plays over his 50-odd year career. His magnum opus was the Voyages Extraordinaires, a series of 54(!) novels that sought “to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format…the history of the universe.”
[…]
From Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou)But it wasn’t just Verne’s inventive prose that captivated 19th century audiences. The Voyages Extraordinaires also included plenty of lavish illustrations, most in black-and-white, depicting each protagonist’s globetrotting adventures.
Thanks to the work of the late Verne scholar Dr. Zvi Har’El, you can peruse all of the original illustrations online.
— more details at Tor.com
N K Jemisin writing a new Green Lantern series
The Witcher
While I enjoyed The Witcher TV series, it was hard to follow because of the three separate timelines, unflagged flashbacks and non-linear series, Here’s what the showrunner said about series one:
…what I misunderstood was what everyone was looking for in their entertainment. For me, and this has been a huge lesson on this project, I love to be challenged when I’m watching TV. I love to not understand everything in the beginning, and to know that if I keep watching and keep paying attention that the puzzle pieces will start to fall into place. Not everyone, it turned out, wants to do that. It was interesting talking to fans who said, “I didn’t have any idea what was happening in the timelines until episode four.” And I’m like, “Yes! Exactly. That’s when it should have hit home.” And to me, that was like a huge success. And yet, that viewer felt like they wanted to understand what was going on from episode one.
— from an interview in Vulture with the showrunner of The Witcher,
Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Read the full interview for an idea what’s coming in series 2
Critical Mass Feb 5th: Asian SciFI
Critical Mass resumes for 2020 at 7pm Wednesday Feb 5th.
Our speaker is Beata, who will talk on Asian Scifi, fantasy and related matters
This evening I will present my first and probably somewhat random foray into scifi and fantasy stuff coming out of Asia – beyond Stein;s Gate and Three-Body Problem. This is a vast and interesting space and my talk will present but a few snapshots of popular culture, internet, film and books. As you dig, you discover. There will be sure more to come in future.— Beata
As usual, 6:45 at Kappy’s (22 Compton St, Adelaide) for a 7pm start,
William Gibson’s Agency
It’s a sensual, remarkably visual ride, vigorous with displays of conceptual imagination and humour. There’s a man wearing a “chocolate brown terrycloth tactical bathrobe”; there’s a bar called “3.7-sigma”; there’s a shopping bag that returns itself to the shop after you’ve used it, by origami-ing itself into a butterfly. Want to eat breakfast at “The Denisovan Embassy”? The name is only Gibson’s opening bid: before you’ve been there half a page, Lowbeer herself arrives in full-sail steampunk, wearing “a Victorian lady’s riding habit, but reimagined as having been cut from nylon aviator jackets” and carrying a top hat. Almost all of the author’s interests, from the political aesthetics of technology to the technology of political fashion, are collected in this near-Moorcockian curation of images. Gibson’s ability to simultaneously destabilise and entertain is both celebrated and used to the full. But it’s also linked firmly to his signature themes, the prime one here, of course, being agency.
from M John Harrison’s review of Agency in The Guardian
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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