They Come Back, But Not Quite Alive

Torchwood: When Jack Harkness is understandably upset when Owen Harper is shot and killed. But at least he's got the Resurrection Gauntlet to bring him back to life, right? Well, sort of. Owen still walks and talks, but he's not precisely alive. His heart doesn't beat, his flesh doesn't heal, and his reflexes are gone. And, if that wasn't bad enough, he can't even enjoy food or sex anymore, and Weevils follow him everywhere.

Caprica: Granted, the consequences of bringing Zoe Graystone back from the dead are pretty far-reaching. After all, it results in the creation of the Cylons and the eventual decimation of humanity. But when Joseph Adama encounters a computerized copy of his dead daughter, her concerns with being back from the dead are more immediate. Without a living body, she has no pulse and just generally feels wrong, to the extent that she can't stand being semi-alive this way.

"Playback" Arthur C. Clarke: Caprica's borrowed a page from Clarke here, who wrote a tale of aliens who try to bring a pilot back to life after his ship explodes. They manage to restore all of his memories, but have no idea what kind of body he had, and he's a bit depressed to find that he's just a non-corporeal simulation.

"The River Styx Runs Upstream" by Dan Simmons: When a young boy's mother dies, his father has her body resurrected. Although her body has returned, her mind simply isn't there, and she wanders through life as an automaton. The boy's distraught father and older brother eventually kill themselves in their grief, horror, and shame, but the boy doesn't think resurrection's so terrible. He himself goes to work for the Resurrectionists, spending his free time with his resurrected family.

You Bring Them Back Wrong

Doctor Who "The Empty Child:" Well-meaning nanobots attempt to reconstruct a child killed during the London Blitz. But not knowing what a human child looks like, they bring him back as a mindless abomination, with a gas mask for a face and ever searching for his mother. Even worse, the bots decide that this is what all humans must look like, and proceed to transmute healthy children as well.

"The Monkey's Paw" by WW Jacobs: The mystical monkey's paw grants wishes, but never in the way you hoped. After the first wish Mr. White makes results in the death of his son Herbert, his second wish is for Herbert to return. Mr. White never sees his son, but he knows after a horrible accident and a week on the slab, Herbert probably isn't the same. His third wish takes Herbert away.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Forever:" Following the same vein as "The Monkey's Paw," Dawn tries to resurrect her dead mother via magic. She also never sees her mother, realizing that what comes back won't quite be her, and breaks the spell before her mother reaches their front door.

They'll Try to Kill You Afterward

30 Days of Night: Dark Days: After Eben Olemaun becomes a vampire to save the remaining citizens of Barrow, he turns to ash when the polar sun finally rises. This sets Stella Olemaun on a quest to bring her husband back to life. But when she succeeds, Eben is still a vampire — and a hungry one at that.

"Herbert West — Reanimator" by HP Lovecraft: Medical student Herbert West is fascinated by life and death, and develops a serum he believes will restart the machinery of the human body. The serum works, but turns the corpses into cannibalistic zombies. West is unrepentant , focused on new ways to find dead subjects for his experiments. Of course, eventually his zombie experiments turn on him.

Practical Magic: After Sally Owens' boyfriend Jimmy turns out to be abusive, she drugs him and accidentally kills him. Fearing prison, Sally and her sister Gillian cast a spell to revive him, but Jimmy's immediate reaction isn't exactly gratitude. He tries to kill Gillian, forcing Sally to murder him once again.

Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.

Lexx: You would think that, given the prophecy that the last of the Brunnen-G would kill His Divine Shadow, the last thing His Divine Shadow would do is resurrect a Brunnen-G corpse. But he did exactly that to Kai, making him one of the living dead as a Divine Assassin. It takes over 2000 years, but eventually Kai does get around to killing him.

Supernatural "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things:" College students and necromancy are always a recipe for trouble. When a broken-hearted boy tries to bring his dead crush back, she's of course got to go zombie and start chomping down on her loved ones.

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert: For thousands of years, Leto Atreides has ruled over humanity, and always has a ghola — a copy — of his father's faithful friend Duncan Idaho to serve him. But the Duncan ghola's almost inevitably rebel against Leto and try to kill him, forcing Leto to kill all but 19 gholas. Still, Leto keeps bringing in a fresh Duncan ghola after each attempt on his life.

They Bring Death With Them

Pushing Daisies: When pie maker Ned touches dead bodies, they become reanimated, without regard for mutilation or decay. But if he fails to deanimate them after more than a minute, a random person in close proximity dies, taking their place. And for Ned, bringing the dead back to life is further complicated by not being able to touch them, lest they fall dead once again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "After Life:" Actually, bringing a body-stealing demon into the world of the living was probably the least of the disastrous consequences of resurrecting the Slayer. Still, when a demon gets loose in Sunnydale, the Scoobies have to kill it before it kills Buffy.

Carnivale: Ben Hawkins has the power to bring people back from the dead, but it comes with a price: one person of Hawkins' choosing must die in exchange for the life. And, try though he might, he can't choose himself.

Torchwood "Dead Man Walking:" Another fun consequence of Owen's walking death is that Death himself comes along for the ride. He's looking for 13 souls to consume so he can remain in the world of the living and slake his thirst for destruction.

It Will Come at Great Personal Cost

The Dresden Files: The sorcerer Hrothbert of Bainbridge committed a crime against his order by bringing his beloved Winifred back from the dead, prompting the High Council to hand down a severe and lasting punishment: they imprison his spirit inside his skull for all eternity. Hrothbert, now "Bob," has been around over a thousand years, but he can't interact with the physical world.

Torchwood "They Keep Killing Suzie:" The other Resurrection Gauntlet actually does bring the dead back to full-fledged life. But naturally there's still a catch: the resurrected person draws life energy from the living wearer, and permanent resurrection means the death of the living wearer.

Full Metal Alchemist: After their mother dies, Edward and Alphonse try to revive her through alchemy. Not only do they fail to bring her back from the dead, they lose physical pieces of themselves in the process, with Edward losing his left leg and Alphonse losing his entire body.

Supernatural: The Winchesters thrive on death and resurrection. When Sam is shot and killed, Dean trades his soul for Sam's life, with the bartering demon collecting in just a year. Sure enough, after a year, Dean dies and head off to Hell.

It Will Attract Unwanted Attention

The Outer Limits "Josh:" When reclusive Josh Butler resurrects a young girl through a strange electromagnetic pulse, it attracts the attention of a tabloid TV reporter looking for a scoop. Unfortunately, it also attracts the attention of the US Air Force, who promptly seize Josh and start performing medical tests.

The 4400: Shawn Farrell manages to bring a bird back from the dead, just one example of his amazing healing abilities. But not everyone is thrilled about his strange new powers, and they bring him to the attention of Jordan Collier, which is a bit of a double-edged sword.

It's Only Temporary

AI: Artificial Intelligence: The evolved mechas who find David frozen beneath the water are able to give the robotic boy his greatest wish: time with his long-dead adoptive mother Monica. The resurrection only lasts a day and can never be repeated. David's okay with the arrangement, since that one day is perfect, but it's a clear audience tearjerker.

They Were Actually Okay With Being Dead

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow assumed that Buffy's death by interdimensional portal had sent the Slayer to a hell dimension, and conjured up some ill-advised magic to bring her back. Unfortunately, Willow never considered that Buffy might actually be in Heaven, leaving her in a major season-long depression as she adjusts to inferior life back on Earth.

Supernatural: Okay, so Dean didn't exactly enjoy his stay in Hell, but he's dealing with some very Buffy-like issues on his return to Earth. He clearly remembers his agonizing time in Hell and got a real taste for torture. And God might have pulled him out of Hell, but his plans for Dean on Earth involve more havoc and torture.

Green Lantern: Maura Rayner is infected with a sentient virus sent by Sinestro and her son Kyle failed to get back in time to save her. He uses his powers to revive her, but she won't have any of it. She senses that, once dead, there's something wrong with being alive and begs him to let her be dead once again.

You Never Really Liked Them in the First Place

The Venture Bros.: Dean and Hank Venture are a tad on the death-prone side, so their father always keeps a few clone slugs around to imprint with their memories. But once they're alive again, he generally treats them as nuisances — or ignores them entirely. But he does find it handy to have a spare organ donor (or two) around.

Red Dwarf: Nearly the entire complement of the Red Dwarf is killed off in the first episode, only to be resurrected in the eighth season thanks to a little nanobot magic. Lister is no longer the only human in the universe, but he and his cohorts immediately run afoul of the newly reconstructed crew.

It Makes for Unnecessary Sequels

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer: We said goodbye to several major characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (as well as the entire planet Earth) at the end of Mostly Harmless. Presumably Eoin Colfer's sequel will see Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian ride again, and Arthur's none too pleased about it.

Says Chabon:

Jack Vance is the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don't get the credit they deserve. If ‘The Last Castle' or ‘The Dragon Masters' had the name Italo Calvino on it, or just a foreign name, it would be received as a profound meditation, but because he's Jack Vance and published in Amazing Whatever, there's this insurmountable barrier.

The Times article gives a great look inside Vance's life and creative process, including the fact that he wrote his first published stories while serving in the merchant marine during World War II. And it talks a lot about his playful use of language, and the ways in which he uses a mock-high culture voice to flesh out his richly imagined worlds. And of course, the ways in which he explored how languages can shape culture, in books like Languages Of Pao.

Even besides the fact that he's getting a massive write-up in the Times, the article also makes the case that Vance is finally getting his due as a literary master. There's the new tribute anthology set in his desolate far-future world, Songs Of The Dying Earth, with superstar contributors including Simmons and Neil Gaiman. There's Totality Online, a website which allows you to search all of Vance's published works for any word or phrase. And there's a complete 45-volume set of all of Vance's published works, the Vance Integral Edition. At age 92, maybe Jack Vance's time has finally come. [New York Times]

According to Variety, Derrickson will direct Hyperion Cantos, which combines the first two novels in the Hyperion series. The script will be written by Trevor Sands, who also recently completed work on the proposed movie version of The Six Million Dollar Man, which doesn't sound too promising, but I'm willing to be convinced.

Scott Derrickson to direct 'Hyperion' [Variety]

Perhaps best known for his Hyperion quadrilogy, Simmons loudly announced his arrival on the scene with the 1985 horror novel Song of Kali. It's a harrowing account of a man's journey to the darkest part of Calcutta, here a city more frightening than any otherworldly hell. The book won a World Fantasy Award, but Simmons had almost given up on trying to sell it before that point. Grab it for an easy read on a train or plane, but Simmons was soon to surpass any tag of 'airport fiction.'

Released in 1989 along with his novels Carrion Comfort and Phases of Gravity, Hyperion is a very different book and the best of three, turning Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales into an all-encompassing galactic mystery. Simmons' universe contains select labyrinthine worlds, and the planet Hyperion is such a world, where the participants in this drama go to fulfill or escape their fates. The book's coup de grace is the novella-length tale of a Christian missionary sent to investigate a tribe of quasi-humans without genitalia or basic intelligence, and the collection of short, digestible stories adds up to a greater whole. Hyperion was just the start of the "Hyperion Cantos" series - running through Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion, along with a handful of related short stories - which is currently in the hands of writer-director Trevor Sands and on its way to the big screen, and not too soon: every minute that passes without our Shrike action figure and matching knife-set is a lost one.

The ideal vehicle to experience the breadth of Simmons in the short form is the seminal collection of his early stories Prayers to Broken Stones. It is a virtual index of what followed Hyperion, and includes the never developed classic, "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites." This reimagination of vampires highlights Simmons' strengths when he delves into horror: Simmons differentiates himself by drawing together disparate elements in a short period, and using elements of science fiction within the horror scope. As the consummate genre-hopper, Simmons' attention can waver, and the short story reins him in.

Simmons became the master of the minor classic in 1992 with the brilliant The Hollow Man, a fiction length treatment of how exciting Sookie Stackhouse's telepathy can be when it has a more understated effect than making you bone vampires. Have a free weekend and a need for literary entertainment? When you combine mental illness and gun violence with a scientific and psychological depth, you have a project tailor-made for film. Even in the most fantastic setting, Simmons keys in on authenticity and detail that makes scientific sense:

I was visiting a certain unnamed SF writer once when he (or she) was working on an invisible man story. This writer had the person becoming invisible by being transparent to light. When I pointed out that the invisible man would also be blind - that the eye needs darkness for the retina to work, just as a camera does - the SF writer became quite irritated. Too bad - this is basic science.

Simmons turned to Greek mythology for a two book Greek epic, Ilium and Olympos, which was also the first indication that Simmons might be overloading his brain with potential source material. Reading the back catalog is can be as tricky as it is inspiring for the working writer of fiction. Some novelists simply can't read anything else when they write - Simmons clearly doesn't fall in this category, occasionally to his detriment (Despite the author's picky tendency when it comes to who adapts his material, the folks behind the adaptation of Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come have been associated with this Homer/Nabokov/Proust inspired tale).

Simmons' 2007 return to the long form was The Terror, a mix of detailed history and total insanity that runs about 766 pages. Although Simmons' books are always thoroughly researched, The Terror represents the work of several theses. The book garnered some attention, but it's not a book you'll read in a weekend, let alone a month. His February 2009 Drood follow-up sticks with historical speculative fiction, and concerns itself with the last years of Charles Dickens as he attempts to complete his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Odds are Simmons will have better luck as he profiles an author whose writing he doesn't care for:

Dickens was not "a major influence" on me. As was true with E.M. Forster, I've always tended to be put off by Dickens's sensibilities, sentimentalities, and even his characters' names. But his life . . . ah, that's very interesting. Especially the last years after his involvement in a train wreck at Staplehurst where he experienced..."

This approach may not win fans among Dickens scholars, but he's no stranger to controversy, as his 2006 essay on the Iraq War, "Message from a Time Traveler" proved. As you can see from his leather jacket and 24-style author photo, Simmons doesn't care what you think. It ain't bragging if you can back it up with a farcaster and a footnote.

Simmons' latest SF release takes on the Bard last year for a spirited take on the space opera genre. Previously featured in The New Space Opera collection, novella Muse of Fire concerns a Shakespeare troupe on an interstellar tour, and more than anything else he's done, could be a Pixar film immediately. The novella is one of Simmons' best forms - in that venue, he's forced to simplify his big ideas, so this may be the idea way to lose your Simmons' cherry. Alternatively, if you'd rather try something a little more topical - and a lot cheaper - Simmons is serializing a story on his website, "Watching the Presidential Debates in Elm Haven", between this month and the next. Check it out, and become obsessed.

Hyperion:
Space-war novelist Dan Simmons has been hoping for a Hyperion movie for ages. Speculation has run rampant on the internet with both Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio supposedly attached to the project. Simmons himself has said that, "yes there is a Hyperion movie in the works. It has been optioned by a top-notch studio, is slated to be directed by a top-name director, and already has the involvement of a top-flight movie star. Screenwriters have been attached to the project and a first draft screenplay is expected soon." The top notch production company was announced to be Warner Brothers with Graham King producing and the release date is set for 2010. Hopefully this will be the last we see of Hyperion on Development Purgatory, and we'll be watching tree-impaling Shrike in no time.

Count Zero, or Zen Differential:
The sequel to William Gibson's Neuromancer, Count Zero was optioned during the height of the Matrix craze. The movie Zen Differential was supposed to be based on CZ and made by Michael Mann. Alas this movie's script never even got a draft.

Logan's Run:
This movie's never ending saga has truly earned its place in purgatory. There was talk of remaking it (supposedly closer to the book) as early as 1994. That faded in and out of possibility until 2004, when Bryan Singer was brought on, and everything seemed good to go. Some pre-production work was done and a draft was written, but then Singer decided to "take a vacation" from film making after Superman Returns, and dropped the project cold. Joel Silver and WB stayed hopeful, and a low-budget proposal by rookie director Joseph Korinski caught their eye. Some are hopeful we'll see Logan's Run as early as 2010, written by Children of Men scriptwriter Tim Sexton with Korinski directing, supposedly under the watchful eye of David Fincher. All I can say is: we'll see.

The Forever War
Alas the Chicago public TV miniseries adaptation adaptation of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War never saw the light of day, neither did the Sci-Fi channel movie (truth be told, I'd rather see the PBS version). Get crackin' people — we want to see the epic battle of humanity versus Tauran aliens. So does Haldeman, apparently, Sci Fi bought the rights to his novel and then never called him back.

King Of Elves:
This movie has been promised to the scifi masses for ages. Disney vows to have this Phillip K. Dick adaptation out in 2012 as their 50th computer animated feature. It's at the end of a very long Disney to-do list, so there's no telling how many times the green-leafy elves will be pushed to the back burner. That being said we are hopefully optimistic about this feature — it seems to be moving forward, but very, very slowly. Also apparently Disney decided to move the elves' location from Colorado to the Mississippi Delta.

Vurt:
Author Jeff Noon wrote a draft of a screenplay for his novel around 2002. It got optioned by Pathe films, with K-Pax director Iain Softley attached. Noon wrote a second draft of the screenplay, but by the time he finished in 2004, the option ran out and got dropped by Pathe, though Softley promised to look for a new producer. The last that was heard about the movie was in 2005 when Noon told readers of his website "don't hold your breath." No! We need our hallucinogenic feathers and our alternate reality ASAP!

With additional writing and reporting by Andrew Hudson.

Apparently, by simplifying the hell out of stories whose main appeal has always been their rich complexity. According to Hollywood Reporter:

Sands won over the execs by taking a selective approach to the two novels' multiple points of view in a way that managed to coherently and unconfusingly tell the story.

Sounds like Sands is all about science fiction, which is a good sign. But putting both Hyperion novels together into one film? Hard to imagine. All I can say is they'd better get some damn good designers to work on this one because Hyperion needs to look awesome. Give me good lightning trees and a cool-looking WorldWeb singularity network, and I might just pay the cost of admission.

Warner Bros Nabs Hyperion Cantos [Hollywood Reporter via IESB]