Pitt's production company, Plan B, is teaming with Indian company Reliance BIG to adapt the upcoming videogame Dark Void, with an eye to it being a vehicle for Pitt himself, according to Variety. The game centers around a character who disappears in the Bermuda Triangle, only to reappear on an alternate Earth besieged with alien invaders. No writers or directors have been hired for the project yet, so we're keeping our hopes up for an unexpected (and utterly unlikely, we know) Soderbergh connection.

Brad Pitt could fight (video game) aliens [THR Risky Business]

Call of Cthulhu RPG: Malleus Monstrorum. With the subtitle, "Lore of Things Beyond," you know this book won't steer you wrong. This is actually a revised edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG's Creature Companion. It collects all the statistics and background information on the many Lovecraftian horrors that have appeared in every published Call of Cthulhu book ever. From crazed cultists to tentacled things to elder gods your mortal mind can't even comprehend, Malleus Monstrorum has you covered.

Star Trek Roleplaying Game: Aliens. There are a lot of aliens out there, and some of them aren't even part of the Federation. In your explorations, you will likely encounter many of them. Therefore, it behooves you to know as much as possible about their abilities, habits and physiology. This sourcebook for the Star Trek RPG fills in all the details. Curious about Horta culture? Wondering how much to tip a Betazoid waiter? Most of these questions are answered here. This also makes a great companion piece to the Starfleet Operations Manual.

World of Darkness: Armory Reloaded. This is, essentially, a book of violence. Not only does it provide a list of efficient and brutal weapons to use in the battle against vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures (or on their behalf, if you swing that way), but it also amplifies the World of Darkness combat rules, making them…well, more violent. When I reviewed this book for Robot Viking a few months ago, I called out this paragraph from the intro, which perfectly exemplifies the approach taken throughout the book:

We want to emphasize here and throughout: combat is some scary business. Blood spattering in the mud, people screaming, the smell of cordite burning nostrils. Bombs blowing people to bits. A vampire's claws leaving a man with his guts hanging out and his wife standing ten feet away, crying so hard she breaks a rib.

Wow.

AD&D 2nd Edition: Van Richten's Guide to Vampires. They aren't here for you to fall in love with, they don't generally smell nice, and they sure as hell don't sparkle. In the many worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, vampires are universally evil. They're usually placed at the apex of the undead hierarchy (liches sometimes compete for the top spot), so you'll find them behind nefarious schemes as often as they're responsible for a rash of bloodless corpses. Van Richten has hunted and slain vampires of all kinds, so you'd do well to heed his advice. Don't bring garlic, bring an enchanted sword. Or, better yet, a Daylight spell.

Gamma World: Machines and Mutants. Gamma World has gone through so many editions and revisions it's hard to keep track. This is from one of the more recent incarnations of the post-nuclear apocalyptic setting. Imagine a world that's a little bit Logan's Run, a little bit Fallout, and that's pretty much Gamma World. This is perhaps the most bizarre manual on this list, as it documents all manner of weird robots and freakish mutants. No, I mean really freakish. Sentient, evil penguins. Genetically engineered fireproof bears. Exploding fish. My personal favorite is the Architect, a robot that's been continually building for decades, creating non-sensical road networks dotted with houses that will remain forever empty. Also, there are man-eating cars.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

We're all excited about Tron Legacy, but more so for the return of light cycles and less because of the script — but Universal has given Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (who've also written many episodes of Lost) the task of turning the Ouija Board flick into a film, which I'm assuming is a step above the Viewmaster Movie and a step below the Monopoly film. According to The Hollywood Reporter this is what they are basing the film on.

The studio is looking at the project as a supernatural action-adventure movie. It is possible that certain rules of the game - never use it alone, never use it in a graveyard, always say good-bye - figure into the plot.

Wait a minute, those were the rules????? I thought the rules were if your parents caught you talking to the devil board, you'd be locked in the basement for three days without any light, so the devil's magic would be washed out of your soul. And what about the rule of fucking with the person who brought said board by making it say horrible things, since they are most likely the only person not to be forcing the triangle to spell their will? Also, spelling is boring.

This whole thing is just a ploy to sell more board games that supposedly connect you to the spirit world. And we all know the only way to really talk to ghosts is with the professional Ghost Hunters team and a film crew, duh.

Based on a novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 takes place 20 years after an apocalyptic event that wipes out most of the human race. It's being developed for THQ by Ukrainian studio 4A Games. [THQ Games on Flickr]

Lost fan Pedro Contreras made a complete Risk set, right down to the cards and plastic tokens, so that the show's various factions can battle for the Island and the Dharma stations. It appears from the pictures that he's even written out instructions for play. I wonder, does he account for time travel in his rules?

Yes, you want it too: Lost Risk [Todo Series via alexvega]

The next Aliens Vs. Predator game isn't due out from Sega until next spring, but some fans on the Sega forum discovered what appears to be new concept art. Besides the lovely spaceport above, there's a lush jungle. And a scene of a poor Colonial Marine getting dragged away while an Alien and Predator prepare to throw down — which is almost worthy of one of the Old Masters, what with the Marine's uplifted face, filled with horror.

The fact that the AVP movies are dead remains a very Good Thing. But maybe one more AVP game could be worthwhile? We can hope, anyway. More art at the link. [SEGA Forums]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a Ukrainian video game in a similar vein to the Fallout franchise. Borrowing material from the novella Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and Andre Tarkovsky's film Stalker, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes place in the Zone of Alienation after a fictional second Chernobyl Disaster, which killed or mutated many of Chernobyl's residents.

This past August, over 200 players got together to organize a real-life version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., with the Russian town of Vyborg standing in for Chernobyl, and latex masks representing nuclear mutations. Their photos provide a veritable storyboard for military response to a mutant apocalypse.

Stalker: Inhabitants of core 2009 [LiveJournal — Thanks, John Struan!]

Not surprisingly, Bushnell's novel in progress is about a "video game designer in the future," and it's "a hilarious experiment," he tells Switched.com. He won't go into much more detail, other than to promise there'll be some awesome action sequences. Bushnell has come out against ultra-violent video games like Grand Theft Auto because it's not constructive or cathartic to portray violence against a cop, sex worker or pimp. But it's okay to show someone killing zombies, because "they're already dead!"

Meanwhile, Bushnell is also coming back to video games, co-founding a new company called Reality Gap. He says that company's major innovation is to have a single in-game currency that will work across all of its games. So if you make tons of ducats in a medieval fantasy game, you can transfer that wealth to a space-adventure game and use to buy ray guns. (At least, that's what he seems to be saying.) Bushnell says a made-up currency was Chuck E. Cheese's major innovation back in the day:

The [game] token system was very key to the success of Chuck E. Cheese. It's something you can promote. You don't want to give away quarters, but with tokens, you can give away games. It gives you some very interesting flexibility to do cool and interesting things.

[Switched]

The Empire Changes Strategy [Star Wars: The Old Republic]

According to a study carried out by Russell Beale and Matthew Bond of the University of Birmingham in the UK, gamers value social aspects of gaming and pricing over storytelling and graphics. The two analyzed game reviews to find what mattered most in determining "good gaming," and found that the cost of the game, and whether or not the game offers chances for others to become involved in the experience outweighed bad storytelling or poor graphics.

Plot and graphics not paramount in videogame success [New Scientist]

According to the website for the in-development MMO Perpetuum:

In the not-too-distant future, a strange anomaly opens the gates of the universe for humans. With this new technology, energy, information and atomic size objects can be transported to anywhere in space.

The most intriguing of all new discoveries is an Earth-like planet, where humanity discovers a new source of energy, vital to its unbroken advancement. However, this planet is inhabited by a synthetic, robot-like life form. Their technology and resources are the goal of humanity's new conquest.

Players may take part in various areas of the project. They may fight on the front lines for new territories, develop the already established infrastructure, trade goods or services, or even set their own goals and set up their own corporations.

There's a ton more info at the website, including some screenshots and a complete future history of the next 200 years of human development. Let's just hope the finished project looks as kick-ass as this concept art of alien landscapes, robots, teleportation gear and stations.

After seeing District 9, we're sad we'll never get to see Halo done by Neill Blomkamp and Peter Jackson, because those are some storytelling and visual-effects chops. The truth is, video game movies don't have to suck — as long as someone better than Uwe Boll is in the director's chair, and you avoid the kind of bizarre decisions that went into giving us Doom.

So here are the ten movies that have a better chance of reaching screens than Halo right now - some of which might even be great.

The game: Dead Space.
Who's in? D.J. Caruso, director of Disturbia and Eagle Eye (and in line to direct Y: The Last Man) was announced as director of this film recently.
What's the Hollywood summary? As Variety puts it, "Set in deep space in the 26th Century, the thriller focuses on an engineer who responds to a distress signal from a mining ship, only to find it infested with monstrous creatures called Necromorphs, human corpses that have been re-animated by an alien virus. The engineer and his team retrofit most of their weapons from tools on the mining ship, and try to stay alive long enough to discover the "hive mind" that is controlling the creatures."
Is it really more likely than Halo? There's a production deal, but nobody's written a script yet, and Caruso still wants to make a Y movie. He's also in pre-production on a movie called Jack The Giant Killer, and working on The Defenders, according to IMDB.

The game: BioShock
Who's in? Gore Verbinsiki, director of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies. With a screenplay by John Logan (Gladiator, Star Trek: Nemesis).
What's the Hollywood summary? Says Variety, "Story takes place in the underwater city Rapture, where a pilot crash-lands near a secret entrance and becomes involved in a power struggle."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Maybe not. Back in April, Universal put the project on hold due to concerns about its high budget (around $160 million.) But Variety adds: "All parties vow that "Bioshock" will not become another "Halo," the would-be live-action adaptation of the Microsoft game that was canceled when Universal and Fox got cold feet over budget fears." So there you go. They vow. And Verbinski bailed out of Pirates 4 to do this project, so he's motivated.

The game: Duke Nukem
Who's in? Depth Entertainment, the studio that produced Max Payne. (So if you liked Max Payne, you're all set.)
What's the Hollywood summary? No details are available, but basically a wisecracking guy fights aliens. Says Scott Miller with 3-D Realms: "We're taking an all-new direction this time around. I haven't seen that old material in years, and can't even remember what it was about. So, we're starting from scratch on a story. Our first order of business is to create a Duke Nukem storyverse, which is similar to a story bible, and fleshes out all of the characters, their histories, motives, and gives a very detailed description of the Duke Nukem "universe." Once this is created, we then have the foundation to create a story and a script. This storyverse document will also be useful for future projects."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Max Payne got made, didn't it? Picture Mark Wahlberg in a tank top.

The game: Area 51
Who's in? Comics god Grant Morrison was hired to write the screenplay in 2007 for Paramount Pictures. No director or stars are attached, though.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says Variety, "Set in the U.S. government's most top-secret military facility, storyline revolves around a hazardous materials specialist who is called in to investigate a viral outbreak that could be extra-terrestrial in nature."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Um, well... there's been no movement since Morrison was attached as screenwriter in 2007.

The game: Mass Effect
Who's in? Avi Arad, former head of Marvel movies and producer of the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, signed on last September.
What's the Hollywood summary? The story follows Commander Shepherd and his crew as they save alien species from the systematic eradication that a random species must face every 50,000 years from a pitiless mechanical foe. And a crusty bureaucray stands in their way at every turn.
Is it really more likely than Halo? Arad has a track record of getting movies made, obvously — but there's been no news in almost a year.

The game: inFAMOUS
Who's in? It was announced in late July8 that Sheldon Turner, writer of The Longest Yard remake and Up In The Air, pitched a movie adaptation and Sony picked it up. Former Marvel exec Avi Arad (and Ari Arad) will produce.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says the Hollywood Reporter, "inFAMOUS centers on bike messenger Cole MacGrath, who survives an explosion that destroys entire blocks of Empire City only to find he has new electricity-derived super powers."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Sony seems highly motivated to make it happen, especially since sister company Sony Computer Entertainment published the game, from Sucker Punch Prods.

The game: Asteroids
Who's in? It was just announced that Lorenzo di Bonaventura (G.I. Joe) will be producing, with a screenplay by Matthew Lopez (Race To Witch Mountain.) No director or stars yet. (Insert your own joke about various Hollywood stars who could play convincing chunks of space rock.)
What's the Hollywood summary? Says di Bonaventura, "We've crafted a really strong, deep mythology for the thing. Without divulging too much about it, it's two lead characters – two brothers – who have to go through a seminal experience to figure out their relationship, against this huge backdrop."
Is it really more likely than Halo? Well, G.I. Joe did pretty well. So, yeah.

The game: World Of Warcraft
Who's in? Sam Raimi is signed up to direct, after he's done making Spider-Man 4. Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) is producing.
What's the Hollywood summary? Says the Guardian, Warcraft "is set in a medieval-style fantasy world called Azeroth populated by humans and such Lord of the Rings-style races as orcs, trolls and dwarves, but also the undead and blood elves. Players must choose whether to join the nefarious Horde or the Alliance faction."
Is it really more likely than Halo? It's pretty much a done deal. Raimi is supervising the start of production while he works on Spidey. It may even be decent.

The game: Gears Of War
Who's in? Len Wiseman (Live Free Or Die Hard) is directing, from a script by Chris Morgan (Wanted), with Bowen and Godfrey of Temple Hill producing for New Line. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson won't star, because "a Doom connection would not be smart for us," says Wiseman. But he's hoping Kate Beckinsale will play Maria, the doomed wife of second-in-command Dominic Santiago.
What's the Hollywood summary? Wiseman told Comic Con that the movie will include Emergence Day, when the enemy Locusts emerged from underground and revealed themselves to the human inhabitants of the distant planet Sera. That would make the movie a prequel to the games, which take place long after Emergence Day. Also, Wiseman says there would be more bad-ass female soldiers.
Is it really more likely than Halo? It's still in the early stages, but Wiseman seems pretty determined to make it a reality.

The game: The Sims
Who's in? John Davis (Norbit, Eragon) is producing for Fox, with a screenplay by Brian Lynch.
What's the Hollywood summary? A couple of kids get their hands on the Sims Enhancement Pack, says Davis, and then mayhem results: "What they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most life-like, real Sims game ever. As they are playing this, they are all of a sudden realising [that] what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It's wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them."
Is it really more likely than Halo? It was announced in 2007 and has been stalled since then. But never underestimate Hollywood's sadism.

I sat down with Buckell at WorldCon last week. First we talked about Arctic Rising, and where he is with it.

Buckell said:

It's a near-future cyberpunk ecothriller. I'm just working on the first third of it. It's the first of two books I'm doing for Tor, and both will be ecothrillers.

I'm trying to write something that's [politically] moderate ecological SF. I did something similar in short fiction in the last year, with my story in Metatropolis, and now I'm taking it into novel form. Some people called me a raging liberal for writing [that story]. But I want to piss off liberals and conservatives – all of their solutions are problematic. Dogma gets in the way of what need to be done about the environment.

There are already responses on the ground to what we're facing that are agnostic – in third world, for example, where people have already figured out ways to reduce your impact on the earth. It's criminal that it's hard for me to find a showerhead that doesn't have an on-off switch that's detachable. I grew up on a boat and all the showerheads were like that. Now I routinely use oodles of water because my showerhead doesn't turn off. Little things like that add up. In St. Thomas, people get water by catching rainwater on the roof.

I realized that there are not many people interested in engaging with this stuff. It's in the political background and in science magazines. But there's not as much engagement with it in science fiction as I've been hoping for. That's why I want to do a James Bondesque adventure with climate change. I love adventure. What I hate about polemical novels is two characters talking to each other.

I asked Buckell if he'd consider doing another franchise tie-in like he did with the Halo novel, and he said that he only did the Halo book because he truly loves Halo. There are few other franchises he feels that way about, but, he admitted, "If anybody was ever to ask me to do something Wolverine-related - good grief I'd do it in a heartbeat."

Instead of playing in other people's franchises, he's interested in creating his own. He said:

You become a mini-consortium if you can. Given how much fun I've had with Halo games, comics, and reading and writing Halo books, I'd love to do different media with my stuff. There's a possible chance of a graphic short story adaptation coming up for me. I would completely dig seeing cross media stuff happen with my work.

One of the most arresting aspects of Buckell's writing is his facility with fight scenes, which are incredibly hard to write well. I asked him what his secret is for planning and executing one of his trademark action-packed scenes. He said:

Fight scenes are all about the stakes. If you took a Jackie Chan movie and novelize it, it would be weird. In fiction, you have to figure out the consequences of the fight scene. What the stakes are, what led the characters there. You need to consider the emotional side of the fight to make it feel like it's a major problem the character has to overcome.

As an action-oriented, blow-things-up writer from the beginning, my juvenalia is filled with fight scenes, but I wasn't able to make them interesting until I figured out they exist in a larger context. The reader is reading it like "oh crap oh crap" and that's what provides the tension. Really effective fight scenes are no more than a paragraph – the important parts are the anticipation and fallout. The shorter you write, the faster it feels to the reader. A page-long fight is the equivalent of slow motion – you've brought the book to a standstill. You can do it stylistically in a John Woo flash, but if you want a balls-to-the-wall, ugly, brief human thing, you've got a paragraph to get to of the action, and then you need to get back into stakes.

When I write fight scenes, I spend time trying to draw out the environment [the characters] are in. Tim Powers taught me that characters need to interact with the physicality of the environment. A fight scene lets you block out the physical nature of something. They climb around in it, and that lets you describe the interior of an airship. You get to provide exposition as well as a fight scene or moments of drama. More effective to have a character back up and fall over a couch than to say "There's a room and a couch and then they fight."

We told you last month about Beattie's desire to make a movie based on the popular Halo franchise and we showed you concept art from his pitch last August. But it seems that we weren't the only ones who noticed the passion in the GI Joe writer's words; Steven Spielberg is, according to IESB's sources, in active negotiations to sign onto the project — in the process, resurrecting it from the dead state it's collapsed into — because of Beattie's pitch.

Whether or not this means that the movie will ever get made, remains to be seen — Halo has already defeated Peter Jackson, after all.

Master Chief and HALO May Be Coming to the Big Screen Sooner than Expected with a New Big Name Producer [IESB]

Even the PR for the game - to be released in November, to accompany the release of Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' movie version - sounds almost embarrassed as it hits the scripted important points. Here's senior vice president of production and development, Samantha Ryan:

Where The Wild Things Are is a beloved children's story and we are excited to deliver an immersive interactive experience based on and inspired by the feature film from Spike Jonze. Through the action-filled adventure, players will team up with the Wild Things - each with their own unique skills or special talents - learn valuable new abilities and work together to find a way to safety.

No. While I'm all for videogames being used to help kids learn new skills and so on and so on, that is not the point of Where The Wild Things Are, and just the idea of this book that's all about the power of imagination being turned into a task-filled videogame should be enough to have Sendak turning in his grave, even though he isn't dead yet. Is nothing sacred? And if not, how can we change that?

Warner confirms 'Wild Things' video game [Digital Spy]

Anyone who is a fan of classic video games knows the familiar story behind Asteroids . . . which is that you are a triangle, and you are shooting a series of geometric shapes. Released in 1979, the game is a perfect example of extremely early and crude computer graphics. And seriously, there was no effort made whatsoever to have a story. Why were you shooting the asteroids? Were they controlled by aliens? Were you trying to break them up so you could mine them for nickel in their cores? It was all an 8-bit mystery.

That's why the story that four studios had a bidding war for the rights to Asteroid seems like it should run in The Onion rather than The Hollywood Reporter. But is is all true.

The movie will be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura, the mastermind behind GI Joe. It is to be written by Matthew Lopez, whose main claim to fame is that he worked on the script for Race to Witch Mountain. He's also done work on the forthcoming flick The Sorcerer's Apprentice. So will this be a kid-friendly film about triangles and blobs, or more violent adult fare? Hard to say.

Obviously, Lopez will be developing this story from scratch. Hollywood Reporter notes:

Universal . . . is used to that development process, as it's in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as "Battleship" and "Candyland."

Couldn't they just combine Battleship with Asteroids so we could have a plotless tale of shooting that spanned skies and sea? Doesn't that sound awesome?

via Hollywood Reporter

Fray, the comic book shown here, is a classic of the post-apocalyptic future vampire genre. Created by Joss Whedon, the short series chronicles the life of a future vampire slayer named Fray. She works in a city divided between the healthy rich and the mutant poor, aiding her mutant buddies by using her slayer powers to be a super-criminal. Complicating her life is the fact that her (evil) twin brother has inherited part of her slayer powers too, and later Buffy time-travels into her world and messes everything up. Also, her watcher is a giant demon with enormous horns; and her boss is an amphibian criminal mastermind. Do not miss this series.

While Fray is a story of future vamps, one of the classics of the space vampire genre is the movie Lifeforce, based on a book by Colin Wilson called (yes) The Space Vampires. A naked lady from space arrives on a human space vessel, immediately seducing a member of the crew with her naked spaciness. Then she sucks the life from him, leaving a dried-up husk! Panic ensues, while more people are sucked and nudity runs rampant and glowy special effects shoot out of people's groins.

Written in roughly the same era as The Space Vampires, Tanith Lee's Martian vampire novel Sabella should probably have been made into a movie with glowing groins too. Sabella lives alone on Mars, trying to discover the mysteries of her past and figure out why men are constantly throwing themselves at her in a haze of lust. This cult classic is definitely off the beaten track for vampire fans, but manages to make Mars into a plausibly gothic landscape.


And then there's the aptly-named Queen of Blood (1966), featuring a lady who is a cross between a vampire and a green sexpot from Star Trek. You know it must be good because it stars Dennis Hopper.


Teenage Space Vampires (1999) is a rare cult classic about what happens when space vampires invade the tiny town of Knowlwood. And a few nerds have to fight them. Includes some great one-liners, as well as a running gag related to a dimensional portal, lawn gnomes, and the vampires' hidden weakness. Really it's just about the lawn gnomes. And throwing them.


Mario Bava's 1965 flick Planet of the Vampires is also one for the ages. I love how in this English trailer for the (badly) dubbed version, the narrator intones, "In a 40 G gravity atmosphere, strange things happen." Indeed: Things like people in really high, black collars and vampire-esque aliens who take over the human crew's body so (of course) their "race can survive." I'm not sure these creatures are strictly undead, but they do occupy the bodies of dead people and look really sinister. Plus, they inhabit a world where people wear a lot of shiny black outfits for no reason. So let's go with the vampire thing. Apparently some critics have claimed that this film influenced Alien.


In 12,090 AD, Vampire Hunter D roams a post-apocalyptic landscape seething with Lovecraftian monsters and vampires. This stunning and truly awesome manga / anime series is stylish, dark and addictive. D is a half-human, half-vamp creature who hunts vamps with the help of a mutant creature who lives in his hand and a cyber-horse for a steed.


In America, we have our own D, known to comics and movie fans as Blade. He's a half-human, half-vamp hunter of vampires, aided by a mutant-looking Kris Kristofferson (in the movie) and a bunch of cyber-cycles. Though the first Blade flick wasn't very futuristic, director Guillermo Del Toro fancied-up Blade II and turned it into a near-future scifi flick about vampires doing genetic engineering on themselves to create a race of super-vamps. Check out a video of the vampire mad science lab here - definitely worth a look.

Then there's the sultry Sivil, from Macross 7. She's a vampiric creature who makes an appearance in what is otherwise pure space opera.

Several novels try to create biologically plausible vampires in space. Most notably, Peter Watts' Blindsight takes place 80 years in Earth's future, when a gang of outcasts (including one vampire) are sent to deal with a spaceship filled with alien creatures that they're totally unprepared to deal with. Tobias Buckell's Sly Mongoose deals with a virus that turns people into zombie-vampires who live to infect others and generate a vast, collective consciousness that can potentially take over a huge volume of space. And in the Vampire Earth series by EE Knight, vampires from space have invaded the planet and altered its climate so they can live here comfortably while they EAT YOUR SOUL. Yes, you can now blame climate change on vamps.

Many scifi TV series had vampire episodes, but none were so literally-named as the Buck Rogers episode "Space Vampires." (above) If you live in the States (or learn how to use proxies), you can watch this piece of televisual brilliance on Hulu. What's the plot? Ummm, scary space vamps with epic eyebrows on a space station. Buck in tight white pants. Colonel Dearing in tight, orange, silky jumper. Some poor victim in what appears to be a macrame outfit. Biting, fighting, feathered hair. The end.


There may be many vampires in Doctor Who, but for us there is only one: the plasmavore from "Smith and Jones." First of all, the name plasmavore is awesome. I wish the vamps in True Blood would insist that we all use that term as the preferred PC name for blood-suckers.


And for Trek fans, there are always the salt vampires, from the aptly-named "The Man Trap." Ex-girlfriends can get ugly.


Why do vampires always want to lure you in with sex? Sexy Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood knows the answer in "Day One." Also, this episode teaches a valuable lesson. Sex in bathrooms always results in dust orgasms. You know what I mean.


And if you want to game, you can play Lunar Knights, a Nintendo DS game with a few vampy moments. Or check out the post-apocalyptic vamp MMO game Blood Wars. Best of all, of course, is cyber-vamp RPG BloodNet.

But if none of this does anything for you, surely Horror of the Blood Monsters will get your heart pumping. Yes, these scary creatures live on another planet. As this awesome trailer promises, "You'll see human beings hideously transformed . . . gruesome mutations!" Also, it's in "weird color." Which is truly a mark of quality in a space vamp flick.

Additional reporting by Stephen Goldmeier.