ORPHAN BLACK and AGENTS OF SHIELD get UK airdates

If you're in the UK you might want to set the recorder for two new major US SF shows that are hitting our shores fairly imminently.

Orphan Black is a science fiction drama series that doesn't really appear to be SF when it starts, but more of an investigative drama. Very quickly the true stakes are revealed. The show has already aired on BBC America in the States and the Space channel in Canada to rave reviews, particularly about the performance of lead actress Tatiana Maslany.

Orphan Black debuts tonight with a double-bill of the first two episodes on BBC-3 at 9pm in the UK, so get the recorder ready quick! The show will also be available on BBC iPlayer, and indeed the first episode has already been put up as a preview. Den of Geek has a non-spoiler preview here, though it will probably leave most none the wiser. This is a show you really need not to get spoiled on ahead of time.

Probably needing less of an introduction, Agents of SHIELD is the TV spin-off from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (most notably The Avengers). Clark Gregg reprises his role from The Avengers, Thor and Iron Man 1 and 2 as Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD, as he assembles a new team of investigators to check out the problems caused by the emergence of super-heroes into an unprepared world. Don't expect any Iron Man or Captain America cameos (just yet, anyway) but other Marvel characters as-yet unused on the big screen may show up from time to time, along with original characters.

The first episode is written and directed by Joss Whedon, whilst the series itself will be helmed by much of the team responsible of the excellent web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Agents of SHIELD debuts on Friday 27 September at 8pm in the UK. The first episode will also be followed by the one-hour series finale for The IT Crowd.

HOMEWORLD and SHIPBREAKERS update

Gearbox held a fan community event today where they had a Homeworld-focused panel (starting at 39 minutes) featuring representatives from both Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive, who are developing Homeworld: Shipbreakers and whose members developed the first two games in the series.

It was confirmed that Shipbreakers will be a prequel taking place on Kharak, the planet the Hiigarans were exiled to several millennia before the events of the games. They also confirmed that the Free-to-Play model for the game has been abandoned and there will be a full commercial release on Steam. They are also looking at ways of releasing the game physically, potentially in a limited edition box set with a model of a Homeworld spacecraft included (this was first mooted jokingly, but the positive reception in the audience have led them to reconsider it).

They have also successfully located all of the source files for the original two games, including audio and music, and are currently working on upgrading them for the HD versions. They have also confirmed that the original composer for the first two games (and the Cataclysm spin-off game) will be working on the HD remakes.

A number of other issues are being looked as, such as bug fixes and how to handle the thorny issue of resource gathering. In the Homeworld games collected resources are carried over from one mission to another. The original Homeworld allowed you to choose when to exit a mission once all resources have been collected, but this can take some considerable time. The benefit of this is that it allowed you to build new units and research new tech at the end of each mission before starting the next one. Homeworld 2 automatically had you collecting all resources on each map at the end of each mission, which was much faster but denied you the ability to reconfigure your fleet before the next mission. Homeworld: Cataclysm (which is not being updated due to the loss of the original source files) used the Homeworld model but included a 'speed up time' button, which seemed an excellent compromise. Gearbox are asking for feedback on this issue on their forum.

Blackbird have also confirmed that their 'Prospector's Guide' pre-purchase scheme for Shipbreakers that they launched before the team-up with Gearbox happened has been shut down. They are refunding the early adopters in full and will still give them a free copy of the final game in thanks for their support.

The re-releases of Homeworld and Homeworld 2 are anticipated for 2014. Homeworld: Shipbreakers does not have a release date as yet.

New ELITE: DANGEROUS trailer

Frontier Developments have unveiled a new trailer for Elite: Dangerous, the fourth game in the series. Made with money from Kickstarter, the game will be released in 2014, which is also the thirtieth anniversary of the release of the original Elite.

They've come a surprising way quite quickly and this is starting to look very promising indeed.

OUTLANDER TV series casts its lead role

Ronald D. Moore's time-travelling adventure/romance series Outlander, based on Diana Gabaldon's novels, has found its leading actress. Caitriona Balfe has previously appeared in the J.J. Abrams movie Super 8 and Bryan Singer's digital series H+. Her next screen role will be the Stallone/Schwarznegger vehicle Escape Plan.

Balfe, who will play nurse Claire Randall, joins Sam Heughan, who will play her on-screen lover Jamie Fraser, and Tobias Menzies (from Game of Thrones and Rome) as her on-screen husband Frank Randall. The series begins shooting later this month on location in Scotland (where the story is set) and will air on Starz in 2014.

Casting and recasting news for GAME OF THRONES

Some further casting and recasting news has emerged for the next season of Game of Thrones.

First up is an actor previously announced playing an unconfirmed role. Mark Gatiss should be familiar to UK audiences, being a member of the League of Gentlemen comedy troupe and also being heavily involved in Doctor Who. He's written novels and scripts for the show (including last year's Cold War and Crimson Horror, two of the stronger episodes of the sub-par season) and appeared as a villain during the David Tennant era. He's also a co-showrunner and writer on Sherlock, where he also plays Mycroft Holmes.


On Game of Thrones Gatiss will be playing the role of Tycho Nestoris, a representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos. In the novels Nestoris does not debut until A Dance with Dragons, which indicates that his storyline may be brought forwards, with some theorising that he may appear in King's Landing before heading to the Wall to negotiate with the Night's Watch as in the books. Casting this role with a relatively high-profile actor hints that Nestoris may have a bigger role in the TV series going forwards.

Elizabeth Webster is a young British actress who has mostly worked on stage. Her screen work includes the movie Cockneys vs. Zombies.

Webster will be playing the role of Walda Frey, one of the numerous daughters of Lord Walder Frey (David Bradley). In the last two episodes of Season 3, it was revealed that she had married to Lord Roose Bolton.

Lou Corfield is a more familiar face from British soap operas. She has played the role of Dr. Freya Wilson on Doctors for the past two years. She has also had recurring roles on EastEnders and Rev.

Corfield will be playing the role of the madame of the Mole's Town brothel. Mole's Town is a small village close to Castle Black, so-named because much of the village is located underground.

Playing an as-yet undisclosed role is the distinctive British actor Joseph Gatt. Gatt recently played a bridge officer on the Enterprise in Star Trek - Into Darkness and a frost giant in the movie Thor.

Gatt's role has not been formally confirmed, but it has been heavily rumoured that he will be playing Styr, the Magnar of Thenn. Thenn is one of the northern-most wildling kingdoms, located many hundreds of miles to the north of even the Wall. Thenn was apparently overrun and destroyed by the forces of the enigmatic White Walkers, forcing its people to flee south and ally with Mance Rayder's army. Styr is a ruthless and cunning warrior. He has a son, Sigorn, to whom he is teaching the art of rulership.

Hafþór 'Thor' Björnsson is an Icelandic strongman, winner of the 'Strongest Man in Iceland' award for the past several years and who placed third in the 2012 'Strongest Man in the World' competition. He is 6'9" tall. Thor will be playing the role of Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain. This role was previously played by Conan Stevens in Season 1 and Ian Whyte in Season 2, with the character sitting out the third season.

Dutch actor Michiel Huisman is best-known for recurring roles on Treme and Nashville, as well as having a role on this year's World War Z (in which former Thrones actor Elyes Gabel also appeared). Huisman has surprisingly been announced as replacing Ed Skrein in the role of Daario Naharis. Skrein's performance as Daario had met a 'mixed' reaction from fans, but it is more likely that Skrein's multimedia career (as well as an actor, he's also a writer and musician) left him unavailable for the role this year.

Dean-Charles Chapman is a young British actor who recently had his big break appearing in four episodes of The White Queen as Richard Grey. Before that he played the doomed role of Martyn Lannister on, erm, Game of Thrones. Confusingly, Chapman has been re-recruited to play the role of Tommen Lannister, replacing Callum Wharry who played the role in the first two seasons (most noticeably in the episode Blackwater). This recasting has proven controversial, with Chapman being significantly older than Wharry. Wharry had also appeared to be quite popular in the minor role. Whilst Tommen indeed has a larger role in the books from this point going forwards, it's still a very minor role with relatively limited dialogue. This may hint that the HBO version of the character will have a larger role than his book equivalent.

It has also been confirmed that Burn Gorman will be returning in his role as Karl, one of the treacherous members of the Night's Watch who rebelled at Craster's Keep. Noah Taylor will also be returning as Locke, the Bolton soldier who earned the enmity of Jaime and Brienne last season. David Bradley has also indicated he will be returning as Walder Frey in Season 4. Also returning after longer absences are Dominic Carter as Janos Slynt and Owen Teale as Ser Alliser Thorne.

Steven Erikson to publish SF novel in 2014

There's been a bit of a change-around in Steven Erikson's schedule for 2014. In a Tor.com Q&A last week he confirmed he's still very early in the writing of Fall of Light, the second novel in the Kharkanas Trilogy, and is still wrestling with a major structural issue which he isn't fully sure how to resolve yet. This has led to the expectation that Fall of Light won't make its June 2014 release date and may instead fall later in the year or even 2015.

However, Erikson will still be publishing a novel next year. Willfull Child (its unclear if the incorrect spelling is deliberate or not) is a comic SF novel that riffs on Star Trek. The blurb is as follows:

These are the voyages of the starship, A.S.F. Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...

And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - a kind of James T Kirk crossed with 'American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through 'the infinite vastness of interstellar space'...

The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a smart, inventive and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown adventure. The result is this smart. inventive, occasionally wildly OTT and often very funny novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.

The novel has a listed release date of 5 June 2014 and an estimated page-count of somewhere around 300 pages. Erikson published a longer excerpt from the book on Tor last year.

RIP Ann C. Crispin

Sad news emerged this morning that science fiction and fantasy author Ann C. Crispin has passed away from cancer at the age of 63.

Crispin, who published most of her work under the moniker 'A.C. Crispin', is best-known for her contributions to several shared universes. She wrote six Star Trek novels, beginning with her first published novel, Yesterday's Son (1983). She also wrote in Andre Norton's Witch World universe as well as penning three tie-in novels for the V mini-series and later regular series. She also wrote the novelisation of the film Alien Resurrection. In 1989 she began writing her own series, Starbridge, which eventually expanded to seven volumes.

In the late 1990s she penned a series of Star Wars novels detailing the backstory of Han Solo. This material became the canonical origin story of Han Solo in the Expanded Universe (though it is expected that the rumoured Han Solo Star Wars spin-off will ignore the Expanded Universe altogether).

In 2011, impressed by her work on the Star Wars novels, Disney commissioned her to write the 'origin story' of Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, resulting in the 600-page novel The Price of Freedom. This was her last-published work.

As well as writing, Crispin was active in SFF fandom. She served as the Eastern Region Director and later Vice-President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. In 1998 Crispin also co-founded 'Writers Beware', an organisation dedicated to exposing scam agents, editors and publishers. In April 2013 she was named Grandmaster by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers.

I read Crispin's Star Trek novels when I was young and found them to be among the best of the tie-in novels from that franchise. Crispin's skill was adding background and layers to characters readers believed they were already very familiar with, and she was not particularly interested in being restricted by concerns over canon. The result were novels that might not 'count' in the official histories of those franchises, but were still well-written and fascinating for the different perspectives on established characters. Her work on the Writers Beware program is also highly laudable, given the number of scam artists out there trying to take advantage of young and up-and-coming authors desperate to get published. Cory Doctorow has a brief obituary to her here.

GAME OF THRONES beats DOCTOR WHO to a Hugo Award

In a surprise result, Game of Thrones proved victorious at Worldcon at the weekend. It seized the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), an award that traditionally goes to Doctor Who. Doctor Who has won the award in six of the previous seven years (missing out in 2009 only to Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog) and was widely expected to win again this year.

Doctor Who's failure to win can be ascribed to a lower number of episodes overall, the fact that those episodes were largely awful, or to the radical increase in the popularity of Game of Thrones, which has swelled to become one of the biggest shows on television (whilst Who has been in a modest ratings decline in the UK). Whilst the second season of Thrones did not win as much critical approval as the first (or third), it was still well-regarded. The episode that won, Blackwater, is also widely-acknowledged as the finest episode of the series to date.

George R.R. Martin wrote the episode that won the award, making this his sixth Hugo Award overall and the third for A Song of Ice and Fire, following the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1997 for Blood of the Dragon and the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) for Season 1 of Game of Thrones (shared with the writers and producers) last year. George R.R. Martin accepted the award along with Rory McCann, who plays Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane in the TV series.

New HOMEWORLD game confirmed

Gearbox and Blackbird Interactive have announced a deal to bring out a new title in the Homeworld series of space-based real-time strategy games. Blackbird (founded by many of the team who made the original Homeworld games) are re-purposing their in-development game Hardware: Shipbreakers - which they had been already treating as a 'spiritual prequel' - as a an actual prequel to the original Homeworld. Gearbox also confirmed that they would be releasing both 'straight' versions of the original Homeworld and Homeworld 2 and HD remakes on PC and other devices, including tablets.

Homeworld was developed by Relic, published by Sierra/Vivendi and released in 1999. It broke new ground for the real-time strategy genre, with a persistent military force that you built up from mission to mission, as well as resources you kept between missions. The game allowed full 3D movement of spacecraft, from lumbering dreadnoughts and carriers to small, nimble fighters and bombers. The game was noted for its fantastic music (a mixture of original tunes and classical music), its sombre atmosphere and its rich storyline.

The game, set in the Whirlpool Galaxy and not involving Earth at all, opened with the people of the desert planet Kharak discovering the wreck of an ancient starship, the Khar-Toba. Inside the ship they found an intact Hyperspace Core, allowing them to travel faster than light, and also a guidestone showing a route across the galaxy to another planet. The people of Kharak realised they were descended from settlers from another planet, Hiigara, their true homeworld. They constructed a massive Mothership to find Hiigara but during its testing run Kharak was obliterated in an alien attack. With the population reduced to half a million settlers (most of them in cryo-sleep), the crew of the Mothership had to guide the survivors of their race to their true home, discovering all sorts of secrets about the galaxy along the way.

A stand-alone expansion, Homeworld: Cataclysm (developed by Barking Dog Studios) was released in 2000. The game, set 15 years after Homeworld, saw a small mining clan forced into a desperate battle with an alien force called the Beast. The game was even more critically acclaimed than its forebear. Sadly, Homeworld: Cataclysm's source code has apparently been lost for good, making a re-release or HD remake unlikely.

A capital ship blowing up in Homeworld 2, yesterday. Or, more accurately, ten years ago.

Homeworld 2, released in 2003, was set 100 years after the events of Cataclysm. A new Mothership, the Pride of Hiigara, has been built to defend against an encroaching alien threat and locate two other missing Hyperspace Cores. If the three Cores can be reunited, it will allegedly usher in a new golden age for the galaxy. However, the alien Vaygr are also after the Cores.

After Homeworld 2's release, Relic was sold to THQ and developed the Dawn of War and Company of Heroes franchises. THQ bought the Homeworld IP from Vivendi in 2007, but failed to do anything with it. Around this time a number of personnel left Relic and set up Blackbird Interactive. In 2010 Blackbird began developing Hardware: Shipbreakers, a spiritual prequel to Homeworld using much of the same art style, music style and even voice actors and fonts. Blackbird apparently hoped to turn the game into a Homeworld prequel early on, and made approaches to THQ which were apparently ignored. They continued development of the game as a separate and new IP.

Earlier this year, THQ went bust and its assets were sold off. Relic were sold to Sega whilst Gearbox, best-known for creating the Brothers in Arms and Borderlands franchises, bought the Homeworld IP rights. Blackbird had made an offer for the IP but it was too low. After the sale Blackbird congratulated Gearbox and worked with them to recover the assets to the Homeworld games to allow them to be re-released. With two new games in development for next-gen systems and no expertise in the RTS genre, Gearbox realised they needed some expertise to make a new Homeworld game and entered negotiations with Blackbird. The deal was signed live on-stage at PAX Dev last month. As well as publishing the new game and allowing it to be set in the Homeworld universe, Gearbox will co-fund and help publish the game.

Hardware: Shipbreakers was formerly set on a desert planet called LM-27 and saw a number of mercenary groups competing to loot crashed spaceships from the planet's surface. It was originally a free-to-play, multiplayer-focused game, but Blackbird had hinted that there would be a narrative. A gameplay footage demo released earlier this year showed some of this and also demonstrated the game's very Homeworld-esque aesthetics in action.

The transition into being a Homeworld game seems to be pretty straightforward. LM-27 will probably now become Kharak, the desert planet the Hiigarans have been exiled to, and it's likely the game will now focus on different kiith (clans/ethnic groups) fighting one another for resources. Whether these will remain the many crashed spaceships of Hardware remains to be seen. It is likely that the new game will culminate in the discovery of the Khar-Toba and the Hyperspace Core that leads to the construction of the Mothership in the original Homeworld. I also suspect that, if successful, a 'proper' Homeworld 3 will follow at a later date.

This is excellent news, though some elements need to be clarified. In particular, if the free-to-play, multiplayer aspect which was extremely lukewarmly received will now be joined by a proper single-player campaign (the previous core of the Homeworld experience).

Peter F. Hamilton charity auction

SF author Peter F. Hamilton is auctioning off a copy of his next book, The Queen of Dreams, for charity. This will be a proof signed by Hamilton and also by the four children who inspired the main characters in the book. The cause is Hamilton's friend Kate Cadman, who is raising money to enter the London Marathon and run in the name of the National Deaf Children's Society. The auction will run for ten days from 1 September.

More information on Peter's site, the Unisphere and Kate Cadman's JustGiving page.

Preview - TOTAL WAR: ROME II

In less than two weeks, Creative Assembly and Sega will release Total War: Rome II, the eighth game in the acclaimed Total War series and the sequel to 2004's Rome: Total War.

Roman and native forces engage in battle in Germania.

As with the other Total War games, Rome II will mix large-scale, turn-based strategic gameplay with a (pauseable) real-time tactical battle engine. Using the map you recruit and deploy armies and navies, build new structures, expand cities and manage diplomatic and economic matters. When one of your armies comes into contact with an enemy force, combat results. The game then switches to a map in which you directly control your army in battle. The focus in these games is on realistic tactics and unit formations, with a wide range of units to control from skirmishers to cavalry and archers. The same rules apply to naval combat, with you deploying fleets packed with troops and able to engage other fleets in battle and undertake boarding actions. For the first in the history of the series, however, the game will also allow combined-arms battles, with navies and armies fighting on the same coastal maps.

A naval engagement off the coast of Egypt.

Rome II also allows you to play as different factions. As well as Rome, you can play as Carthage, Macedon, Britannia (the Iceni), Gaul (the Arverni), Germania (the Suebi), Parthia or Egypt. A free expansion (available on release day) adds Pontus, whilst a month or so later another free update will add the Seleucid Empire. Three of the Greek city-states - Athens, Epirus and Sparta - will also be available to play as a paid expansion on release day, although this will be included free for those who pre-order the game. The game will also feature dozens of non-playable minor factions, many of them with unique forces, for you to defeat and conquer as you try to spread your empire across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The strategic map showing the deployment of forces around Alexandria.

Available exclusively for PC, Total War: Rome II is the most graphically-impressive-looking game in existence. However, Creative Assembly claim that they have optimised the game so it will work on any machine that can run their previous game, Shogun II, without sacrificing visual quality.

For myself, I was a huge fan of the original Rome: Total War and Medieval II (released in 2006) but not so much of the more recent games in the series. But this is certainly looking hugely impressive, and will be the first Total War game I get on release day since Medieval II. Here's hoping it can live up to its immense promise.

Total War: Rome II will be released on 3 September 2013. It is available to pre-order now on Steam (though those without fast broadband might want to be forewarned that the game will be a colossal 35GB download, and maybe prefer to get a boxed copy for a faster install).

UK to air AGENTS OF SHIELD soon after USA

Channel 4 (and 4 HD) in the UK will be broadcasting Joss Whedon's new show, Agents of SHIELD, within a few days of American transmission. The exact day of the week is still being worked out, but the show launches on Tuesday 24 September on ABC in the USA.

This is quite a coup for Channel 4, although it remains to be seen if they can translate the massive success of The Avengers at the box office to good ratings for its TV spin-off show.

Paramount considered a new STAR TREK TV series last year

It's been surprisingly confirmed that Paramount held some meetings last year with Michael Dorn - who played Worf on seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - to discuss creating a new Star Trek television series. According to Dorn, the meetings went well but further development was shelved out of respect to J.J. Abrams's then-filming second Star Trek film.

Dorn has been saying for several years that he would be willing to return in a new Star Trek series focused on his character. Worf is one of the most popular Star Trek characters and has appeared on screen more times than any other character (outstripping his nearest rival - Colm Meaney's Chief O'Brien - by a clear fifty episodes). Whilst there has been strong fan support for such a plan, there has also been scepticism about Paramount's willingness to consider a new Star Trek series set in the original timeline whilst the 'Abramsverse' has proven popular with movie audiences. However, with Abrams moving on to the Star Wars franchise and the Blu-Ray re-release of Star Trek: The Next Generation selling very well, Paramount may be reconsidering their previous position.

A new Star Trek TV series is inevitable at some point, but whether this will be it remains to be seen.

Neil Gaiman provides update on AMERICAN GODS TV show

It's been about two years since HBO optioned Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods for a TV adaptation. Gaiman recently provided an update on the status of the project.

Gaiman recently turned in the third draft of the pilot script and said it had been very well-received, with an expectation that the project will move ahead at some point. Gaiman said that for the TV show he has radically expanded on the original novel, with new scenes showing the bank robbery that went wrong and landed Shadow in prison. Apparently HBO were concerned about these deviations from the book, so the new scenes have been moved from the start of the episode to later on and reframed as flashbacks.

When we might get a firm commitment from HBO is unknown. HBO's hour-long drama roster is pretty full at the moment, which some have suggested is the reason why both American Gods and their I, Claudius adaptation (which, it is speculated, will be both an adaptation of the Graves novels and also a long-term sequel to HBO's Rome, possibly using that series' still-standing sets in Italy) have not yet moved forwards.

BLAKE'S 7 TV reboot moves to Microsoft

SyFy has apparently declined to produce the rebooted Blake's 7 project they were presented with last year. As a result, the project has moved to Microsoft, where they are considering it as an original drama series to air through the X-Box's TV channel (alongside the Halo TV series they are currently developing).

Martin Campbell (director of James Bond movies GoldenEye and Casino Royale) is still attached to the project as a producer and will direct the pilot episode.

XCOM: ENEMY WITHIN announced

Firaxis have confirmed they are working on a major expansion and overhaul to XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Entitled XCOM: Enemy Within, the game will launch on 13 November this year.

The game will be an expansion for PC users and a stand-alone boxed release for console gamers (where it will also incorporate the previously-published DLC for the original game). The bad news is that the campaign will unfold pretty much as before, with the same milestone missions such as attacking the alien base and infiltrating the enemy command ship. There's no new campaign as such. However, the existing campaign will be changed.

The most obvious changes include new weapons such as a flamethrower, which is devastating for short-range combat, and new enemies such as the Mechtoid, a Sectoid in a battle-mech suit. These battle-mech suits - known as MECs - can also be created by your forces, giving you a powerful new weapon on the battlefield. You can also genetically modify your soldiers using alien tech. Both MECs and G-mods will require a new resource called 'Melds' which need to be recovered during missions. However, the aliens will set the Meld canisters to self-destruct when you attack. This will introduce new tactical considerations to missions, with players having to choose to secure Melds, carry out their mission objectives more quickly or split their forces. Because the Melds are alien tech, it is possible for them to corrupt your soldiers if you are not careful, hence the title.

There will be 47 new maps and map-types, including much-requested farm layouts. The game will now also track how often certain maps are used and will pump in new maps to reduce repetition. The game's code has also been adjusted with some elements previously locked away in Unreal Engine files now transferred to the .ini files, allowing modders to adjust the game more thoroughly than before. However, enabling randomly-generated maps will not be possible.

This is positive news, although the lack of a new campaign or other much-requested features (like base invasions) is slightly disappointing. But anything that fleshes out the original, excellent game is certainly worthwhile.

Updated MALAZAN release dates

Amazon's latest information suggests that both of the next Malazan novels - Ian Cameron Esslemont's Assail and Steven Erikson's Fall of Light - have unfortunately been delayed.

According to Amazon, Assail will be released on 27 March 2014. The blurb is as follows:

The final chapter in the awesome, epic story of the Malazan empire.

Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive and sailor's tavern and now countless adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in search of riches. All these adventurers have to guide them are legends and garbled tales of the dangers that lie in wait -- hostile coasts, fields of ice, impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword. And beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very beginnings. Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers to mysteries that Shimmer, second in command, wonders should even be sought. Arriving also, part of an uneasy alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii soldiery, comes the bard Fisher kel Tath. And with him is a Tiste Andii who was found washed ashore and who cannot remember his past life, yet who commands far more power than he really should. Also venturing north is said to be a mighty champion, a man who once fought for the Malazans, the bearer of a sword that slays gods: Whiteblade.

And lastly, far to the south, a woman guards the shore awaiting both her allies and her enemies. Silverfox, newly incarnated Summoner of the undying army of the T'lan Imass, will do anything to stop the renewal of an ages-old crusade that could lay waste to the entire continent and beyond. Casting light on mysteries spanning the Malazan empire, and offering a glimpse of the storied and epic history that shaped it, Assail is the final chapter in the epic story of the Empire of Malaz.

Meanwhile, Steven Erikson's Fall of Light, the second volume of The Kharkanas Trilogy, is now listed for 5 June 2014. No blurb is yet available.

GAME OF THRONES actor wins two major roles on OUTLANDER TV series

Tobias Menzies, who plays Edmure Tully on Game of Thrones, has been cast in two major roles on Ron Moore's TV adaptation of the Outlander books.

Menzies, who first rose to attention playing Brutus on HBO's Rome, will be playing both Frank Randall, the 20th Century husband of lead character Claire Randall, and 'Black' Jack Randall, his 18th Century ancestor. In the books and TV series, Claire is a WWII nurse who develops the ability to move between 18th Century Scotland and mid-20th Century Britain, and becomes embroiled in a romance with a Scottish rebel in the past.

Sam Heughan was recently cast in the co-lead role of Jamie Fraser.

Outlander will start filming in the autumn for transmission on Starz in 2014. Menzies' casting will presumably limit Edmure's future appearances on Thrones to when filming does not overlap.

New Terry Pratchett cover art

The cover art for the new Discworld book, Raising Steam, out on 24 October in the UK and 7 November in the USA. Pratchett has moved to a new Amercian publisher, Doubleday, who will be handling his Stateside books from now on.

Peter Capaldi announced as the Twelfth Doctor

In a (disappointingly cheap and cringe-inducing) live broadcast last night on BBC1, it was announced that Peter Capaldi will be playing the role of the Twelfth Doctor on Doctor Who, taking over from Matt Smith. Smith will bow out in this year's Christmas special (likely at the end), which will also mark Capaldi's first appearance in the role.

Capaldi was born in 1958 in Glasgow, Scotland, making him the second-oldest actor to play the role, as he is only a few months younger than William Hartnell was when he was cast as the First Doctor in 1963. He is also the third Scottish actor to play the role, after Sylvester McCoy and David Tennant. Capaldi began acting in the early 1980s, winning an early notable role in the film Local Hero (also starring Burt Lancaster). He alternated film work, such as appearing in Dangerous Liaisons (with Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich) and Lair of the White Worm (with Hugh Grant), with working on TV in shows such as Minder and Rab C. Nesbitt. In 1994 Capaldi wrote and directed a 20-minute film, Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, which won the Academy Award for Best Short Film.

In 1996 Capaldi became known to genre fans when he was cast as the Angel Islington in Neil Gaiman's BBC mini-series Neverwhere. The same year he appeared in The Crow Road, an adaptation of Iain Banks's novel of the same name. Capaldi, a fan of Banks, has since recorded the audio book versions of a number of his novels.

In 2005 Capaldi was cast in his signature role, that of government spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, in the satirical series The Thick of It. Tucker, whose response to any crisis is a stream of foul-mouthed invective and cynicism, was allegedly loosely based on Tony Blair's spin doctor-in-chief, Alastair Campbell. Capaldi won a BAFTA Award for Best Comedy Performance and two British Comedy Awards for his performance. In 2009 he starred in the movie spin-off In the Loop, in which the team visit Washington DC in the middle of a major military crisis in the Middle East (the movie also features the late James Gandolfini as an American general). In 2007-08 Capaldi played the recurring role of Mark Jenkins on Skins, a father whose overbearing attempts to get his son to do well at college backfire badly.

In 2008 Capaldi played the role of Caecilius in The Fires of Pompeii, an episode of Doctor Who (by coincidence, the episode also featured Karen Gillan in a minor role before she was cast as companion Amy Pond two years later). The following year he gained significant critical acclaim for his performance as the haunted civil servant John Frobisher in the Torchwood mini-series, Children of Earth.

The casting of Capaldi is an interesting move. He's one of the highest-profile actors to be cast in the role (arguably only Paul McGann and Jon Pertwee were as well-known when they were cast) and going older was unexpected, with the feeling after Ecclestone, Tennant and Smith being that the BBC wanted younger, more attractive and energetic actors for the role than previously. Out of the names being touted, Capaldi was definitely the most interesting, however, and he will definitely bring a different tone to the series than in the last few years.

Also, with the revelation that a hitherto 'secret incarnation' of the Doctor previously existed (to be played by John Hurt in the 50th anniversary special in November), this makes Capaldi the Twelfth 'Doctor' but the thirteenth incarnation of this particular Time Lord. Long-term Doctor Who fans will know that Time Lords are supposedly only able to regenerate twelve times (and thus have thirteen incarnations) before dying for good. It remains to be seen if this plot point will be explored in the new series or simply ignored.

We will see the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who on 23 November this year, followed by the Christmas special (featuring the regeneration) on Christmas Day. The next full season of Doctor Who is expected to air in late 2014.