The show is based on ideas from King's Hard Case Crime novella The Colorado Kid, and comes from the team of Scott Shepherd, Lloyd Segan and Shawn Piller, all of whom had previously worked on the six year run of another King adaptation, The Dead Zone. Unsurprisingly for a King project, Haven happens to be a spooky town in Maine, where nothing is as it seems. In this case, that means people with curses that are killing them, something that FBI agent Audrey Parker is determined to get to the bottom of. Although this sounds like it has the potential to be a supernatural version of Eureka, Syfy are currently calling this a thriller, and Original Content VP Mark Stern is excited about its potential:

'Haven' is the quintessential Stephen King town, full of complex, yet identifiable, characters and compelling supernatural situations... Sam [Ernst] and Jim [Dunn, both Dead Zone - and, oddly enough, Shrek The Third - alumni] wrote a great pilot.

Expect to see Haven in the new year.

Syfy picks up thriller 'Haven' [Variety]

DreamWorks TV and Spielberg will executive produce the miniseries based on the 1088-page book. And it's good that they are trying for a miniseries, because this novel is big and full of characters. There's no way it could be a one-night affair. Under The Dome takes place in a little Maine village which is quickly and forcibly sealed off by an invisible force field. So quickly, in fact, that one towns person loses an arm.

If this is done well, it could mean more cable miniseries, which would be a good thing, The Prisoner notwithstanding. After all, we all know Watchmen would have been a brilliant miniseries. But let's hope this big project opens doors for more.

Synopsis:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when - or if - it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens - town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing - even murder - to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.

[Variety]

This picture, which was released in Vanity Fair, shows the brand new musical cast for The Addams Family, which is opening in Chicago. And if all goes well, it will head to New York city's Broadway. The musical's site actually has a lot of brilliant little videos detailing this family's journey from The New Yorker to television and eventually to the stage.

In other musical news Stephen King's Carrie is amping up for its big Broadway debut and has cast Molly Ranson as Carrie, Sutton Foster as gym teacher Ms. Gardner, Marin Mazzie as Margaret White, and Jennifer Damiano as Sue. But that's not all: American Idol contestant Diana DeGarmo is in the cast somewhere as well.

Carrie: The Musical was one of Broadway's most legendary disasters several years ago, crashing and burning despite being a co-production with the Royal Shakespeare Company. It's become a legendary symbol of excess — here's a TV spot for the original production. But this new take will supposedly be very different. But you should definitely skim Youtube for old videos from the classic 1988 production — the opening scene "IN" is especially horrifying.

So what is American Vampire?

The series follows, and is focused on, the concept of vampire geneology and vampire evolution. It reimagines vampires as these creatures that have evolved as the bloodlines hit different populations at different times, so there's different species of vampires, like there are different breeds of dogs. So there's this whole hidden history, this whole secret family tree. But the thing that it's about specifically is, there hasn't been a new breed of vampire in a couple of hundred years for reasons that are part of the fun mystery of the first couple of [story cycles]. There's only this one dominant species, and it's the one that's the classic, Euro-centric, nocturnal, stake through the heart... You know, the vampire that, when I conceived of the series, we were all a little sick of. The star of the series is the bloodline, this new breed of vampirism. The forward-moving part of the series, the part that's most exciting for us is, we have new characters with each cycle, with big parts played by favorite characters from the past, but we'll also be revealing parts of the secret history and how the world of vampires came to be the way it is. And also, the brewing tension between all the breeds of vampires that exist now.

So there's a big, behind the curtain, story that we're working on as well [as the individual story arcs].

So how did it get started? Did you pitch it to Vertigo?

I came up with it as a concept a few years ago, actually - I don't know how interesting this is, it's kind of a boring story, but I was in one of those model shops, like Warhammer shops, down in the West Village and I saw one of those figurines, and it was a zombie confederate soldier. I just started thinking about how, in so much vampire material at the time - and this was before Twilight, more around the Queen of the Damned time - vampires were always nocturnal and aristocratic and elegant and it just seemed so out of place, and out of touch with any straight-up American iconography that I could come up with, or my favorite genres, like westerns or 50s sci-fi and all that kind of stuff. I was like, how come we never see vampires in these kind of places?

I started to develop the idea back then, and I thought about doing it as a series of stories, I thought about doing it as a book, and at one point I was going to do it as a screenplay with a friend. But basically, I started doing some comic work on the side about a year ago, and I got the chance to pitch it to Vertigo last summer when an editor at Vertigo called Mark Doyle, who's since become one of my closest friends, read one of my stories in an anthology of literary writers coming up with new superheroes. He actually approached me at a reading for the book and asked if I was a serious comic fan, or just moonlighting for the purposes of the story. I told him I was, I'd always been, and I feel like he gave me a pop quiz; he was all, Well, what're you reading right now? And at the time, it was Final Crisis and Secret Invasion and everything like that. I think he was convinced, and he asked me if I wanted to pitch something. So I went there and I think he sort of expected me to pitch something more literary, but I was like, Hey, what about this vampire thing?
I'd been thinking about doing it as a comic for awhile, and thinking about approaching people who do more horror comics, like IDW or whatever, and then this came along and he really flipped over it. Once we got it on the table, it went pretty fast through development there. It was pretty much greenlit when they asked if there was anyone that I knew who from the writing world who might be interested in giving it a quote or a blurb. I knew Stephen King from before, so I asked him if he would be willing to do it. He read the pitch and decided that he really liked it and said, I'll do you one better. If you want, at some point, I'll write an issue for you. It's pretty funny; I called Vertigo on, I think it was a Friday afternoon, and left a message saying that Steve was interested - By the way, he makes you call him Steve, I don't want to sound like an asshole going "Steve, Steve" - I left a message on Friday afternoon pretty much when the office was already closed saying that he was serious about wanting to do an issue, and it was Monday morning, 9 in the morning, I get a call and everyone was there, and they're all "Did you say Stephen King was interested in doing an issue...?" [laughs]

Once he was involved we wanted to [work out how best for him to write an issue or two]. The characters were all developed, I had the seasons mapped out from the pitch. Steve wanted to write this character, who was planned for the second cycle, but Mark and I came up with the idea of doing it like an eight-page, or a teaser, at the end of each issue, to show a glimpse of Skinner, who's the first American vampire. He started writing it, and then he wrote me an email two weeks into it and asked if I'd mind if he went off the reservation a little bit. I was, like, go ahead, do whatever you want. He wound up writing five episodes of sixteen pages, doing so much better than I could've ever done. It really does raise the bar for the series, and he introduced so many big ideas about what the American West means to us, and all these questions about fact and fiction and legend versus history, and all this stuff that really enriches it. Not to mention, he just makes it really scary and vicious.

How did Rafael [Albuquerque, series artist] come aboard? His preview art is beautiful.

Oh my God. I promise you, this guy is incredible. He came in and did some sketches to see if he got the characters, based on the scripts, because the scripts were done, and he just nailed it immediately. It was, that's our guy. The funny thing is, some of the promo art, the sketches of Pearl...? That's from his audition, those're some of his first sketches. That was the first thing I saw from him, and I thought, that's my character. That's exactly her. She's a little bookish, independent, a little quirky. He's been such a creative force on the series, he brings so much to it.
Rafael, when he read the scripts, was like, Why don't I do the different cycles in different styles? So he would up doing Steve's cycle - which is the origin story of Skinner, who's the first of the new American vampire species, born of this random mutation - in these beautiful washes, so it has this painted, antique quality to it, as well as a creepiness. And for mine - which takes place in the 1920s and picks up on the second American vampire, the first person Skinner turns, who's this young girl and a struggling actress in the silent film industry - he did it in this precise inked, art deco style. I can't reiterate enough how amazing he has been on the book. He's enhanced it, he's been a total superhero himself on it.

It sounds like this a really big story.

I'm so excited for the places we're going to go. We're already mapped out through the first twelve issues. The next cycle is already page broken, after these first five issues, and after that, the next cycle is pretty much thought out. And after that, I know what decade it's taking place in. It's fun with all of the press it's getting, the fun of introducing [the concept]. There's something sexy about an American vampire, because "It's American!" [laughs]. It's an interesting time to be American. Part of the series is about investigating what's horrific about the American character, and what's heroic about it, and the difference of that in different periods. But we're really way ahead of the game in terms of giving ourselves time to do eight or nine drafts of the scripts, because, believe me, no-one is more aware of a potential vampire backlash or the pressure once Steve is not on the series. We believe in it a lot.

American Vampire seems to be more than just a title, it's a statement of the book's intent, the American versus European...

Well, it's a fun hook, and there's a kind of, I guess, patriotic thrill in introducing a vampire that's supposed to be American and is stronger and more vicious and so on, but the story isn't about cultural stereotypes. The idea is that the bloodline mutates randomly at various times, and some of the characteristics of the person are adapted into that vampire. So it's the characteristics of a person, of Skinner, rather than a nationality, because otherwise you get into the specifics of, what makes us African-American, what makes us... It's person-to-person. Every once in awhile the bloodline will jump, not with every new person it hits, but every once in awhile, the blood will make something new with someone.

We're trying to keep it geneological, but the vampiric qualities have an American characteristic, because it comes from the character of Skinner and he is a character that's iconographic to the [Old] West, where he's this vicious snakelike outlaw. He has this desert quality, but they're based on him, based on a broad cultural assessment on what makes us American.

But what we are starting to do is explore the idea of American identity through the different time periods. With the first issues, it's a little tough, just because of the format, sixteen pages of story for Steve and sixteen for me, so there's a tightness to it that works really well for the way they double as stories. But there's more breathing room, I think, for exploring the decades once we get past the first cycle.

Pearl seems as iconic in her own way as Skinner.

I can promise you that the way they come across on the page, they're not someone you've seen before. Skinner is not The Man With No Name, in the same way that Pearl is very much her own character while keeping that quality of the "20s Girl." She's someone who's more fish out of water, she's a lot more bookish and isn't caught up in the glamour. She loves acting for her own reasons, and a lot of it comes from her upbringing. We try to flesh the characters out so that they're more than just their iconographic selves, especially these two. Pearl and Skinner are two opposing forces early on the series. Skinner is anarchy and violence and fun, and has the opinion that what makes us American is what keeps the west wild, and that we should be wild, and the taming of the west he sees as a feminization, an imposition on the American character. You can imagine how that works itself out in different time periods, where there's prohibition, or the construction of Las Vegas.

Pearl, on the other hand, is ethical and struggling to be someone who carries the best qualities of what we would think as American. She has a more hopeful and optimistic belief.

Is this going to be a series where there's a lot of jumping around in time periods, as opposed to telling the story chronologically?

Yeah, each one is going to approach a different decade, at least at first. Each story will pick up in a different decade but the same bloodline in surprising ways, so there will be some chronological jumping.

Are you watching True Blood, reading or watching the Twilights?

I'm a huge fan of True Blood. Some things I've not caught up with... I read the first Twilight - my wife has actually read all of them - but my feeling is, each one of them brings something different to vampire lore. I've never seen vampires as teen heartthrobs the way that Twilight does it, or the reimagining of vampires as a sociological underclass and the Southern Gothic elements of True Blood make that really fresh. For us, we're trying to bring something new to the table too. American Vampire wasn't conceived as the tale end of a trend. It definitely, for me, predated both of those, so I'm hoping that - When each one of those came out, we were all, Oh, it's just part of the trend, but the better stuff comes out in the crashing of a wave and you're like, That's awesome! We're hoping that we have that kind of response.

We really have put a lot of sweat and blood into it about making it something different and high quality, so that if there were no other vampire things around, you're look at it in the same way. I was thinking about it, but other than Bram Stoker's Dracula, I haven't seen a vampire comic since the peak of 30 Days of Night. For us, it's great not to be on TV with Vampire Diaries or True Blood, and we're not a movie, so hopefully it'll stand apart as a good read.
American Vampire debuts in March from Vertigo.

King's attempted to finish this book twice before, but it's finally all done. Here's the official synopsis:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as ‘the dome' comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet, teams up with a few intrepid citizens against the town's corrupt politician. But time, under the dome, is running out....

Right now if you head over to the Dome site, the entire 336,114-word book is broken down into over 5,000 chunks. If you have the, time and the talent, try organizing the thousands of paragraphs into one fluid novel.

The series, announced (fittingly) on the stroke of midnight last night, is created by Voodoo Heart writer Snyder with a second story running throughout the first five issues written by King in his first all-new comic work on characters he's created. Tracing an alternate history of an America populated by vampires, the series will launch in March next year.

Look for an interview with Snyder about the series later this week.

Scott Snyder and Stephen King to write a new horror comic book series, American Vampire [Graphic Content]

The Masks by Ray Bradbury

Masks, myths and metaphors" play an important part in much of Bradbury's work, claim Jonathan Eller and William F. Touponce in their Bradbury study, The Life Of Fiction, and they believe Bradbury gets to the bottom of this obsession in his never-finished novel called The Masks. Filled with images of carnivals, this 1940s novel would have been the purest distillation of Bradbury's obsession with magicians and magic.

The Owl In Daylight by Philip K. Dick

When Dick died in 1982, he was busy with The Owl in Daylight, which is reputed to be concerned with deaf aliens abducting a B-movie composer, artistic genius, new forms of sensory input, an amusement park, or a sci-fi reboot of The Divine Comedy, depending whom you ask. Dick never outlined the plot, so it's hard to say. His wife Tessa published her interpretation of his concept in 2009, but her version is largely her own work, and draws inspiration from Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Irontown Blues by John Varley

We interviewed Varley back in March 2008, and he told us:

One of these days I hope to write a third novel in the Steel Beach, Golden Globe trilogy, entitled Irontown Blues. The reason I haven't written it is that I don't yet know what's going to happen.

People have been waiting for this novel forever, and little is known about Varley's ideas so far. Back in February, he said it's "third in line," after two other novels he's working on. "If I write it, it would be about a cop," he told Xero magazine.

The Pressure of Time by Thomas M. Disch

A sequel to Camp Concentration, about the pursuits of a society of humans become immortal through genetic alterations caused by a plague that swept through the world. A few regular mortals also survive, hiding out in enclaves. Disch explained:

For various reasons, personal and impersonal, I never got back to work on "Pressure", and now I see I won't, alas. Since Camp Concentration (which took 8 months to write) I realise I can't afford to spend such a lot of time on a book that earns only a standards sf advance". The personal reasons included an intense affair with the poet Lee Harwood that lasted about six weeks. After Harwood left him, Disch suffered several months of unrequited love. Disch confessed that much of The Pressure of Time was "inspired by the pangs of despised loved". Disch travelled around, visiting Ireland and Turkey, but suffered writers block. Unable to continue with his own work, he wrote novelisations of The Prisoner and Alfred the Great.

The other books in Octavia Butler's Fledgling series.

Butler died after Fledgling came out, but the book's ending left most people believing she intended to write at least one sequel, if not many. I've heard rumors she'd made notes on a sequel, but can't find any confirmation of that online. Butler also had started a third novel in her Parable series, called Parable Of The Trickster, but was unable to finish it due to a seven-year bout of writers' block. (Octavia Butler's advice on dealing with writers' block? "Fall in love. Why not? You're already miserable.")

Voyages D'Etudes by Jules Verne

Verne wrote 50 pages, and never finished the rest. The book was rewritten by his son Michel as L'etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac, along with several other works inspired to greater or lesser degree by his father's manuscripts. Esperanto enthusiasts are particularly saddened that in so doing, Michel expunged all references to support for the nascent language, of which Jules was a proponent.

Azathoth by H.P. Lovecraft.

Ia! Ia! Lovecraft started this novel in June 1922, but only wrote a small fragment, which was published afterh is death in the journal Leaves. According to Wikipedia, he described it as "a weird Eastern tale in the 18th century manner" and as a "weird Vathek-like novel." (Vathek being an 18th century novel about Arabia.) You can read the fragment that he actually wrote here. It starts quite stirringly, bemoaning our gray, citified, un-magical existence.

A Sense Of Time by Henry James

Yes, that Henry James. The "Turn Of The Screw" guy. He started writing this romance, about a young man who discovers he can walk through portals into the past, in 1900, but all the time-travel mechanics got too convoluted and gave him a headache. He abandoned it, only to return to work on it in 1914, writing another huge section. In the novel, Ralph Pendrel travels back and takes the place of his own ancestor, but then the woman he loves realizes he's a time-traveler and makes a great sacrifice to help him return to the present.

The Plant by Stephen King

This was King's famous experiment, where he serialized a novel online, and you were supposed to pay him $1 every time you downloaded a chapter. If the percentage of downloaders who paid $1 dropped below 75 percent, King threatened to stop posting the chapters. And eventually, that's what happened. The already-posted chapters have been removed from King's site. The novel is about a paperback editor who receives weird letters (and odd photographs) from a magical weirdo. The editor sics the cops on the magician, who sends him a strange plant in revenge.

The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis

A story of interdimensional travel including the titular tower (which turns out to be a far-future replica of the the bog-ugly Cambridge University Library), this was supposed to be the original sequel to Out of the Silent Planet. It ends abruptly and some people have accused it of being a forgery.

The Splendor And Misery Of Bodies, Of Cities by Samuel R. Delany

This sequel to Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand may never actually see the light of day. We asked Delany about it a while back and he explained:

I did write about 150 pages of it at some point. But a number of things had come up to undercut it. I've explained it many, many times, and don't mind explaining it again. I was in a major relationship at that time, that kind of fueled the first volume, Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. And that relationship broke up, and that was the beginning of the Eighties, at the same time the AIDS situation came in.

And after that, Delany's view of the gay community changed somewhat drastically.

The Salmon Of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Adams was working on this book, a Dirk Gently novel, when he died, but he'd decided his ideas for it didn't work for Gently. So he tried first turning it into a standalone novel, and then reworking it into a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy installment. The version which appears in the book of the same name does star Gently, and involves a client who wants to hire him to find the back half of her cat. According to Don't Panic, the book about Adams by Neil Gaiman (with revisions and updates by Guy Adams), the fragment which appears in the book is actually from several different versions of Salmon which were on Adams' various hard drives. What we have is pieced together from three files — Chapters 2, 8, 10 and 11 are from one file, Chapter 1 is from an earlier draft, and Chapter 9 is Adams' last known piece of writing. It's basically a mish-mash, and an assembly of working notes and fragmentary stuff.

Like the novels we're discussing, this list is decidedly unfinished — what are the books that were never completed, for whatever reason, which you would dearly love to read?

Additional reporting by Josh Snyder, Mary Ratliff and Cyriaque Lamar.

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.

Fangoria has the scoop that the Weinstein Company is reworking Cell - King's 2006 novel about a cellphone signal turning Americans into mindless zombie-like creatures - from its failed movie pitch - at one point, to be directed by Eli Roth - into a four-hour television miniseries, with a script written by John Harrison, who's prevously worked on Painkiller Jane and Children of Dune for the SciFi Channel.

No network or transmission date has been revealed.

Flickr image by Macwagen.

Stephen King's CELL will now ring as TV miniseries [Fangoria]

The Purple Cloud: In M.P. Shiel's 1901 science-fiction classic The Purple Cloud, a Scottish preacher warns that God doesn't want us to explore the North Pole, and will strike down anyone who tries. But an explorer named Jeffson doesn't listen, and somehow he unleashes a deadly purple cloud, which wipes out the entire human race, except for Jeffson and a hawt young woman. Shiel sent this masterpiece off to a publisher, William Blackwood And Sons - which rejected it, but then published a very similar novel under the title The End Of An Epoch, Being The Personal Narrative Of Adam Godwin, The Survivor, by A. Lincoln Green. In Green's book, a man named Adam goes to work for a microbiologist, Dr. Azrael Falk, who claims he can immunize the body against all diseases - but he's actually developing a super-baccilus that will kill everyone. Meanwhile, Adam's fiancee Evelyn is traveling to the North Pole with her father. When the super-germ gets released, only Adam (who's immunized) and Evelyn (who was in the North Pole during the epidemic) survive. (Do you see what he did there? Adam and Evelyn?) Shiel cried foul, but had no recourse. Luckily, the Purple Cloud got a more worthy copy years later, when Stephen King used it as a major inspiration for The Stand. (Unlike Green, King acknowledges borrowing from Purple.) And then, in turn, author Robert R. McCammon was accused of stealing from The Stand for his book Swan Song.

Phantoms: Two sisters, Dawn Pauline Dunn and Susan Hartzell, wrote a couple of books, The Crawling Dark and Demonic Color, under the name Pauline Dunn. Too bad both books - especially Crawling - stole huge chunks of prose, plus ideas, from Dean R. Koontz's novel Phantoms, about a whole town that disappears overnight. The publisher withdrew the book (although it's on Amazon for 40 cents) and Koontz forced them to take out a half-page ad in Publisher's Weekly apologizing.

Star Crash: Peter David recounts (via Scott Edelman) that he was working for a publishing house, Elsevier Nelson, which put out a novel called Star Crash by an unknown author. Turns out it was copied, word for word, from a 1960s novel by comics writer Gardner Fox.

We wound up getting back the entire advance from the plagiarist and sending it to Fox, along with any future royalties and a guarantee that the book would carry his name on it should it go back to press. DC put us directly in touch with Gardner. Considering the circumstances, he was extremely gentlemanly about it. His attitude was that it was found money for him; the book had been out of print for ages and all of a sudden it was generating new revenue for him.

Death In The Spirit House: Two writers, Ron Montana and Craig Strete, collaborated for a time, and then Montana later accused Strete of ripping off his novel, Death In The Spirit House. The case became a huge brou-ha-ha, with writers taking both sides, but author Sheldon Teitelbaum investigated and decided that it was more a misunderstanding than a case of out-and-out theft. (And Teitelbaum, who seems to have some history with Harlan Ellison, blamed Ellison for escalating the feud and hooking Montana up with his attorney.)

The "Rum Tum Tugger" fiasco: Writer Ann Melrose copied a Chet Williamson story, "To Feel Another's Woe," including large passages verbatim. She did change the story from first to third person, and her characters are auditioning for Cats instead of Streetcar Named Desire. Melrose had the nerve to send her re-engineered story off to editor Ellen Datlow - who had published the Williamson original, and immediately recognized the inferior copy.

Future Cop: Remember the classic TV series Future Cop, starring Ernest Borgnine as a human police officer who teams up with an android? Me neither. But Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova sued, saying it was too similar to their short story "Brillo," also about a human teaming up with an android cop. (Isn't that also awfully similar to Asimov's Caves Of Steel?) They won a "piffling" $285,000 settlement, according to Ansible, which added: "I am waiting keenly for Dr. Who or some such huge-budget production to plagiarize my own 'Sex Pirates and the Blood Asteroid.'"

Alien: Author A.E. Van Vogt sued 20th Century Fox, claiming the movie Alien ripped off his classic novel The Voyage Of The Space Beagle. Fox supposedly settled out of court.

The Unfriendly Ghost Writer: When people accused Lanaia Lee (aka Mary Kellis) of stealing wholesale from David Gemmell's book Dark Prince for her novel Of Atlantis, she stood by the originality of her work. At first. Then she blamed her agent, Cheryl Pillsbury, who had hooked her up with a ghostwriter, Christopher Hill. Hill "fixed up" Lee's novel, by patching it with some bits of Gemmell. Lee tried to play on people's sympathies, pointing out she was a stroke victim, and Pillsbury threatened her critics with "wiccan curses."

Beware Falling Suns: Cecelia Holland accused author William James of ripping off a few of her novels for his space-opera trilogy. It's not like he did anything obvious, like calling one of his novels Before The Sun Falls, when one of her books was called Until The Sun Falls. Oh wait. He did.

The Third Eye: A woman named Sophia Stewart accused Warner Bros. and a bunch of other people of ripping off her 1983 story, The Third Eye, for both The Terminator and The Matrix. She said she had provided it to studio people, and also sent it to the Wachowskis in response to a 1986 ad seeking science-fiction stories for them to turn into comic books. She also posted some Matrix-looking excerpts on her site:


It was reported in 2004 that Stewart had won her case, but apparently it was actually dismissed because she failed to show up for a hearing and had produced no evidence.

The Invisible Rip-off: Someone who has a bit more standing to accuse The Matrix of copying is Grant Morrison, author of comics series The Invisibles. Morrison told an interviewer that it's well known the Wachowskis gave copies of the Invisibles collections to their designers and told them to copy from them:

It's not some baffling 'coincidence' that so much of The Matrix is plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image, lifted from Invisibles so there shouldn't be much controversy. The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it.

He added that the main problem with the two sequels was that the Wachowskis didn't steal enough from The Invisibles this time around.

There Can Be Only One: When a 12-year-old Quebecois girl, Marie-Pier Cote, wrote a novel, Laura L'immortelle, everyone greeted it as a precocious miracle. She got lots of attention in the news media - until someone uncovered that she hadn't written the book at all - she had plagiarized a Highlander fan fic. That's just embarrassing, on so many levels.

Terminator With A Glass Hand: Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron and the makers of Terminator, claiming the movie ripped off a couple of Outer Limits episodes he'd written: "Demon With A Glass Hand" and "Soldier." Cameron and producer Gale Ann Hurd, and put an ad in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. Says Ellison's own website: "Ever since then, Cameron is said to go ballistic if Ellison's name is mentioned."

The Super-Lawsuits: As we detailed in this post, the Man Of Steel has been a tireless champion... of his own intellectual property. Fox Publications hired Will Eisner to create their own Superman, who was called Wonder Man. Eisner also created the Superman-ripoff Master Man for Fawcett. National Publications was energetic in pursuing all of these wannabe-Kryptonians in court.

Eragon's Destiny: George Lucas has never sued, but Christopher Paolini's Eragon books, also known as The Inheritance Cycle, are widely acknowledged as a Star Wars ripoff. The similarties extend to some very minute details (although Paolini undoes the part where the Luke character's father is the Darth Vader character, instead making the Obi-Wan character his dad.)

Nosferatu: The 1922 film Nosferatu movie could be generously called an "unauthorized remake" of Dracula, because F.W. Murnau and company couldn't get the rights to Stoker's novel.

Elementary Plagiarism: That Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data and Geordi take on Professor Moriarty on the holodeck? Technically plagiarism, because the Sherlock Holmes canon hadn't passed into the public domain yet, something that took the writers by surprise when they received an angry letter from the Arthur Conan Doyle estate. (The Trek writers were able to settle the matter enough to use Moriarty in a follow-up episode.)

The Trouble With Flatcats: Writer David Gerrold might have accidentally lifted the Tribbles (from Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles") from the flatcats of Robert Heinlein's The Rolling Stones. Heinlein read the script, and sent a note back saying "I felt the analogy to my flat cats was mild enough to be of no importance," and that the idea wasn't really original with him in any case.

Miniature: The Twilight Zone episode "Miniature" (starring Robert Duvall) was shelved for twenty years, after an author sued for plagiarism. It was finally reaired in 1984.

J.K. Rowling has been accused of plagiarism many times - most notably by Nancy Stouffer, a woman who claimed she'd invented the word "muggle." (Even though it appears in the Oxford English Dictionary as dating back to 1205.) She lost so badly, the judge ordered Stouffer to pay $50,000 and never accuse Rowling of plagiarism again. (I also saw something about a woman who sued Stephen King, saying he flew past her house in his private airplane and took pictures of her writings, so he could copy them. But I couldn't find any details.)

The Island Horror: Director Robert Fiveson accused Michael Bay's The Island of being a straight-up rip-off of his 1970s schlock fest Parts: The Clonus Horror. Fiveson sued, and Dreamworks settled out of court for $1 million.

Player Piano: Kurt Vonnegut said he "cheerfully ripped off" the plot of Brave New World for this novel - and Aldous Huxley, in turn, stole it from Eugene Zamatian's We.

Is plagiarism getting worse in science fiction? Samuel Delany seems to think so. He says, in his book About Writing:

[E]ven the nature of plagiarism has become a new order of problem in the last thirty years. From the eighties through the present, writers from age fifteen to age thirty-five have regularly handed me stories that were pastiches of William Gibson's Neuromancer, Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings, or, more recently, Rowling's Harry Potter. Many do not even bother coming up with new names for the characters. Some have actually been quite skillfull. But all these young writers were quite surprised when I told them there was no hope of publishing such work outside a specifically fan context. More than one told me: "But whenever you read about movies or television, or even best sellers, everyone always says what producers and publishers want is something exactly like something that's been successful. That's what I thought I'd done..."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with lifting a few ideas here and there. Isaac Asimov explained, in an interview, that he doesn't mind people borrowing his ideas, as long as they don't steal his stories:

As a matter of fact, we authors in SF are more or less friends; we inhabit a small, specialized world in which we are comfortable, and the general feeling is that ideas are common property: if one SF writer thinks up something which is very useful, another may put it into his own words and use it freely. Nobody in SF is going to accuse any other person in SF of using his ideas; in fact, we borrow so generously that there's no way of telling whose idea it was originally. For instance, in my novel The Caves Of Steel, it was very important to the plot to have moving sidewalks, with an elaborate system of side strips that enabled you to work up to the speed of the sidewalks or to work down to the surrounding, motionless medium. This had already appeared some years before in Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll." Well, I borrowed it without any worry at all. I'm sure that Heinlein in reading my novel would have recognized his system, but who knows where he got it from? He never said anything. It'd be different if I used the details of his plot and worked up a story that was so like his that nobody could fail to see it - that's plagiarism. But just to use the idea and build your own plot or story about it - why, we do that all the time. And they do it from me, too - you know, they use the three laws of robotics - and they're welcome. I have no objection.

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

Warner Brothers has tapped Dave Kajganich (The Invasion) to adapt Stephen King's novel It. There is no director attached just yet but super producer Dan Lin and Vertigo's Roy Lee and Doug Davison are involved as well.

No one can live up to the crap-I-just-pissed-myself performance Tim Curry gave as Pennywise, and that was for a TV miniseries. This movie could fall flat on its face if this role is miscast. I'm not sure who could fill Curry's clown shoes, but if done correctly there should be a mass switchover from showers to baths and I may never sleep again.

[Variety]

He Was Abducted by Aliens

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams: Arthur Dent, one of the token Earthlings traveling through the stars, discovers a Tennessean singer with the initials “EP” at an alien bar called “The Domain of the King.” Dent and Ford Prefect buy a pink spaceship from the fellow and tip him an obscene amount for singing “Love Me Tender.”

Animaniacs “Space Probed”: One fateful night, the Warner siblings find themselves aboard an alien spacecraft. A quick inspection of the ship proves that they’re not the ship’s first Earthling guests. Elvis has beaten them to the punch, along with Amelia Earhart, Bigfoot, and Jimmy Hoffa.

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, insists he never laid a hand on Mr. Presley, no matter what some pub quiz game says. Chances are that Elvis either is flipping patties at a Burger Lord in Des Moines, or was abducted by aliens who thought him too good for our world.

He Is an Alien

Men in Black: If MIB taught us anything, it’s that anyone you’ve ever suspected of being from another world actually is, from Dennis Rodman to your kooky third grade English teacher. As for the King, he didn’t die, Agent K coolly informs us; he just went home.

“The Bride of Elvis” Kathleen Ann Goonan: Elvis wasn’t just the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll; he was a King, a royal member of an alien race. Fearing his party-hearty ways on Earth would lead to his premature demise, his caretakers, known as “Brides,” place him in a death-like coma until their ship returns to take him away.

He Faked His Death

Bubba Ho-tep: Weary of his fame, Elvis decides to take a breather and find someone else to endure his endless public adoration. He exchanges lives with the world’s most convincing Elvis impersonator, but when the facsimile dies on the can, no one believes that Elvis is the genuine King. He lives out his remaining days in relative peace, at least until the mummies and vampires start showing up.

Death Becomes Her: All individual who partake of Lisle von Rhoman’s immortality elixir must eventually disappear from the public eye. But Elvis can’t resist the occasional tabloid photo op.

Preacher by Garth Ennis: Jesse Custer picks up a number of hitchhikers as he heads towards the Alamo, but perhaps the most memorable is the shadowy Southerner who rhapsodizes on his long-surrendered fame. He never says his name, but reveals his identity as soon as he slides into Custer’s car with a “Thangyu Verrmuch.”

The Chronicle “The King is Undead”: In an episode written by The Middleman’s Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the journalists of tabloid newspaper The Chronicle discover that all Elvis impersonators are, in fact, vampires. And it seems that when the King learned this horrifying truth, he faked his death, adopted the name of his stillborn twin, and became the world’s foremost hunter of the Elvis-themed undead.

The X-Files: In “Shadow,” conspiracy-obsessed Fox Mulder jokes that Elvis Presley was the only man to successfully fake his own death (Andy Kaufman apparently bit it for real). But when the Lone Gunmen investigate an Elvis impersonator only to discover that he isn’t actually Elvis, the trio begins to worry that the King may truly be dead.

He’s Alive and Well, in an Alternate Universe

Armageddon: The Musical by Robert Rankin: A group of aliens become frightfully distressed when their favorite soap opera – the planet Earth – is about to be canceled due to Armageddon. To extend Earth’s airtime, they decide to create an alternate plotline in which Earth’s destruction is delayed. So they send Barry the Time Sprout back in time to persuade Elvis Presley to resist the draft, thus averting US involvement in Vietnam. The time-traveling Elvis ends up creating some alternate histories of his own, including one in which he’s worshipped as God.

He’s Been Copied

Thriller by Robert Loren Fleming: The short DC series features Kane Creole, an Elvis clone turned bank robber. Creole’s none too pleased with the way his creators desecrated the original Elvis’ remains and angrily kills them off.

What If? “What If Thanos Changed Galactus Into a Human Being?”: In this hypothetical tale, Thanos responds to Galactus’ attack on him by transforming the planet eater into a human being. But the remade Galactus isn’t just any human; he’s a perfect copy of Elvis Presley – before the weight gain and the undignified toilet death. Galactus can even sing and dance like the King, and when Galactus is offered the chance to return to space godhood, opts instead to remain on Earth and keep Elvis’ legacy alive.

He’s Really Dead. Honest.

Elvissey by Jack Womack: Elvis may be dead, but that doesn’t stop a cult from emerging in the year 2033 claiming him as semi-divine. In an attempt to maintain their monopoly on the human consciousness, a multinational corporation sends two of its agents to retrieve a young Elvis Presley from an alternate history’s past. But the Elvis they bring back is less “King of Rock” than “sexual predator.”

Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris: Elvis hasn’t made it into True Blood yet, but in the source material, the King was discovered very slightly alive by a vampiric morgue attendant. The misguided vamp decides to make the overdosed Elvis undead, but the resulting creature, answering only to “Bubba,” is somehow brain damaged by the process. The other vampires treat him as a dimwitted errand boy, and try to keep him clear of any household pets.

“You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” by Stephen King: Presley is the mayor of the ironically named town of Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven, a spot in the afterlife where all the great, tragically deceased rock stars of the world gather and subject “normal” residents to interminable concerts for all eternity.

Odd Thomas Series by Dean Koontz: Elvis numbers among the ghosts who befriend the specter-spotting Odd Thomas. Elvis is reluctant to leave the world of the living because he’s not prepared to face his mother’s spirit.

Six-String Samurai: After a Russian nuclear attack destroys an alternate America, Elvis becomes the literal king of a chunk of the American Southwest. After four decades of rule, he dies, and America’s remaining musicians vie to fill his rhinestone-covered shoes.

RoboCop 2: Lest we had any doubt about the King’s demise, RoboCop 2 settles it. The megalomaniacal drug dealer Cain has Elvis’ skeleton, which is sealed inside a glass coffin.

The Twilight Zone “The Once and Future King”: Not only is Elvis unequivocally dead in this Twilight Zone episode, he actually died long before 1977. Gary, an Elvis impersonator, gets sent back to 1954 and meets his idol. But when he tries to prematurely introduce Elvis to rock music and his famous shaking hips, a baffled Elvis becomes enraged and Gary is forced to kill him in self-defense. Gary then takes on Elvis’ identity and spends the next two decades living out every Elvis impersonator’s dream.

Mom turned from her computer. “I don’t think I understand,” she said, carefully. God. I should have known she was going to make this complicated.

“Greatness,” I said. “I need to achieve it. Pothead Space Ninja isn’t going anywhere, and I think it’s because you guys are still alive. Don’t you want me to achieve greatness?”

“That depends,” she said. Typical. “I’m still confused.” Even more typical. “What is Pothead Space Ninja?”

I sighed. Normally, I don’t think personal issues like hopes and dreams and aspirations are one’s parents’ business, but in this case I figured it was a moot point. Or would be soon, anyway.

“Pothead Space Ninja is my novel. Or it will be. I mean, it is, but it’s more like a Platonic ideal of my novel right now. It’s gonna be so good, though.” I flashed her a big, confident grin, the kind I reserve for moms.

She nodded and started to rise. “I have a show on in fifteen minutes, and I really want to watch it...”

“No!” God. This was just like when I was nine and she made me go with the family to visit my grandma in California for two weeks instead of letting me stay home by myself so I could go to Josh Biteler’s birthday at Showbiz. “Listen to me!”

Deep breath. “OK,” I began, “so everyone knows that, like, orphans are the best at achieving greatness—”

“Like Annie?” Mom interrupted. “Because I think Annie would have rather had her parents alive than have gone to live in a mansion with Daddy Warbucks.”

“Not like Annie—” I started.

“Gosh, you loved that movie. We couldn’t get you to stop singing those songs. I remember, you told me you wanted to be Annie for Halloween, and oh, we had to argue with you for hours that sixteen was too old for trick-or-treating at all, much less dressed as a little girl—”

“I don’t mean like Annie!” I yelled. “I mean like Bruce Wayne! Clark Kent! Peter Parker! Luke Skywalker! Harry Potter! The deaths of their parents shaped all of them in ways that can’t be appreciated by those of us who are progenitorically advantaged. And ‘progenitorically advantaged.’ Is that a total oxymoron of a saying or what?”

“It’s not a saying,” Mom said, shaking her head. “And I don’t think you can just kill us and suddenly—I don’t think it works that way.” She looked at me closely. “You know those are all fictional characters, right?”

“Stephen King isn’t fictional! And his dad died before he was born! His mother raised him, but still.” I glared at her.

“I guess that’s good news for me,” she said. She turned back to the computer. “But you still can’t kill your father.”

“What the fuck?” I was so mad now. “You want me to end up like, I don’t know, Hawkeye? I bet Hawkeye’s parents are still alive and they’re embarrassed for him. ‘That your boy, Barton? In the purple suit?’”

“I don’t know who that is—” Mom said.

“Exactly,” I snapped.

“—but you used to love wearing that purple hat of mine. If I hadn’t taken it back, you would have brought it to college with you.”

AAAAGGGGHHHH.

“Listen,” she went on, her fingers dancing on the keyboard. “I want you to succeed. Your father does, too. If this is actually about those power-skating lessons we made you take, I have already apologized for that over and over again.” She moved away, revealing a Wikipedia page on her screen. “Look. Stephen King’s father didn’t die—he just left. After Stephen King was born.” She touched a finger to her chin. “And you know, Luke Skywalker wasn’t technically an orphan, either.”

“It’s like—” I gritted my teeth. “It’s about the principle, or the archetypal forms or whatever. It’s just—you have to trust me. I don’t have time to explain it. You should read Joseph Campbell—”

“Oh! We watched him on PBS!” she said. “That was neat.” More typing. “If Ninja Pothead is so important to you, I think you should just sit down and write it instead of killing anyone. And you should write down those stories about Stripey. You were so funny when you used to tell them to your little brother. She was a good cat.”

GOD. “It’s Pothead Space Ninja,” I said. “And that’s not even the real ti—”

“Here,” she said, pointing to a new Wikipedia page. “Hawkeye was an orphan, too. So I guess it’s no guarantee of anything. You certainly cannot kill your father and me if you’re only going to be in charge of the West Coast Avengers. There’s a reason I moved away from California. It’s an unhappy place.”

I just stared out the window. She was never going to get it.

“I think maybe you just need to (a) get better at doing your research, and (b) doing your work.” She stood up. “Now, my show is on.” She left.

OK. It took me a few minutes, but I regrouped. This was nothing new. And if Mom, as usual, wasn’t going to go for it, there was only one thing to do.

Dad was in the basement, moving some boxes. “Hey,” I said to him, “I gotta kill Mom. Don’t worry—I’m not going to have sex with you.”

Commenter Moff’s real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found at scribblescribblescribble.com/blog.

The TV version keeps the King story, originally taken from Tommyknockers, remarkably intact, all told. The main change is that instead of Jesus, it's just a random model in a picture frame talking to her. But they kept the part where the frame guy/Jesus tells her that her husband is cheating on her. And the sequence where the guy tells her that her husband put half a can of laxative in his boss' coffee, so the boss pooped his pants in front of everyone. And, of course, the guy telling Becka to kill her husband. Here's another brief freaky moment:

First, some background: The teenage Roland grew up in Gilead, a dusty hamlet in which the Old West and the even older medieval times meet, itself set in a timeless world underlain with curious technology, alternate universes, and of course magic. It’s the later that exacts havoc on Roland’s life: After becoming a full-fledged gunslinger, he’s eyed by the powerful and manipulative wizard-type Farson who’s itching to destroy both the fledgling Roland and his placid homeland.

So his dad convinces him to high-tail it out of Gilead. With a couple friends in tow, he lands in the town of Hambry where Roland takes possession of Maerlyn’s Grapefruit (a.k.a. a mystical crystal ball coveted by Farson) and romances a lass. Things are looking up, until said lady friend is whacked amid a plot to destroy him and his motherland. You see, the fine folks of Hambry—they’re friends of Farson.

Long Road Home follows the trifecta making their way back to Gilead, mulling over their traumatic sojourn to Hambry. With the Hambrians on their tails, the threesome’s walkabout gets that much more complicated once Roland’s soul is sucked into the Grapefruit. Forging ahead on parallel trips (think The Lord of the Rings or Empire Strikes Back)—Roland in an alternate reality, his comrades in the creepy frontier—Roland’s buddies struggle to bring him back to safety while eluding the baddies. Also figuring into this equation: the Hambry village idiot getting probed by a robot. We kid you not!

Despite being populated with killer canines, underworld demon-like lords, nefarious crows, and the like, a bunch of stuff happens but not a lot of stuff actually transpires on this Road. It’s an excellently ominous interlude—Jae Lee’s landscapes ache with menace and shadows—that can, at turns, feel like a stalling plot that reaches an inevitable conclusion: Roland has changed. (The narrator’s good-ol'-boy quips, which are too frequent and at odds with the characters’ feudal speak, don’t exactly speed things along.) But perhaps it’s unavoidable, this being an excursion from King’s original book. Our suggestion? Best to read Road’s gripping predecessor, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, to fully soak up its follow-up's rich, brooding color.

Okay, so it's only a couple of theaters: at a New York city movie premiere and in the winner's hometown. But that's still pretty awesome. The trailer must be a promo for a book published by Shomi, an imprint of Dorchester that publishes books combining fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, thrillers and romance. To enter the Shomi contest, upload your trailer to Youtube. Before you start pitying Stephen King for having to sit through tons of trailers for cyberpunk time-travel romance novels, be reassured: he only has to watch the five finalists, as chosen by Shomi. Presumably he'll be judging them against the high standards of his own directorial debut. [Galleycat]

After Hollywood passed on Interworld in 1996, Gaiman and Reaves decided to rework it as a novel. Alas, no one was interested in publishing it. However, they sent it out again in 2006, and it was purchased by HarperCollins and published last summer. And now the project has a new lease on life in Hollywood as well.

While Gaiman is probably best known for his comic book stint on The Sandman and his fantasy novels like Neverwhere, Reaves has written episodes of everything from Buck Rogers to Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sliders. Which comes in handy in Interworld, since the main character Joel finds out he can travel between alternate Earths. According to Gaiman it was,

An idea about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the cosmic balance.

Oddly enough, Stephen King's alternate worlds novel The Talisman is being turned into a miniseries later this year by Dreamworks Television, which also involves a young boy who can "flip" between worlds, although the other places he goes are mired mostly in magic. One of the characters even states, "They have magic like we have science." We just hope that the slight similarities between the two stories don't force Dreamworks to shelve Interworld, because who wouldn't want to join their own superteam, made up of different versions of themselves?