Lovely Aliette de Bodard went deep, deep into the world of Acatl as she discussed the final novel in the Obsidian & Blood trilogy, Master of the House of Darts, with the Faster Times.

Aaand she made this lovely trailer for this latest Acatl novel too. Studio roll VT:

Aaaaaaaaand she’s running a really cool Aztec-themed competition on her blog. Check it out and win win win, as apparently they say!

Lovely Trent Jamieson talked all things Roil with the nice folks at Ranting Dragon.

Ahead of the concluding volume, King’s War, lovely Maurice Broaddus took a long, hard look at the extraordinary world of his Knights of Breton Court series for the Pudge Factor.

Lovely Lauren Beukes, modestly not mentioning much about her massive, massive new book deal (me and her mother, Mrs Harris, are so damn proud), was interviewed by Bruce Sterling. Yes, that Bruce Sterling.

Anne Lyle was lovely enough to share some advance secrets from her upcoming magical Elizabethan fantasy The Alchemist of Souls with Fran Terminielo.

The lovely KW Jeter was Guest of Honor at Steamcon III recently. Check out the pics and a great write up from Steampunk News. We think all our authors should get an official convention photo done with a girl with a boat on her head. No, just because.

And finally, no skateboarding puppies this week, but instead the lovely Lavie Tidhar gave great podcast for the Skiffy & Fanty Show in this discussion of his new novel Osama. It’s not by us, but it’s bloody great so fair dues and all that.

If you’re going to Conflux, Australia’s premier SF convention, at the end of the month, be sure to join a trio of our best authors for some metallic fun and games. Out in force and pressing the flesh of all you grateful meat-things will be local Robot representatives Jo Anderton, Trent Jamieson and Kaaron Warren, for a full hour of meet & greet & readings plus (we’re told/warned) some appropriately AR-themed refreshments.

Oh, if only we could be there too… (don’t finish that sentence).

So head on over thattaway for an exclusive sneak-read of a chapter from Adam Christopher‘s wondrous Empire State, a whole five months before it’s published.

Yes, really. Fly, fly now!

Un:Bound Video Trailer
Those crazy folk over at Un:Bound (a great genre book blog) have decided to create a video series call Un:Bound Video Editions (UBVE). The first edition goes live sometime tonight, but check out the trailer, below. (And who is that handsome chap in the glasses? No, not him – the other one…)

Nebula Awards
Awards season is once again upon us – not that it ever really goes away. We’re currently smack-bang in the middle of the nominations round for the Nebulas – the awards voted on by members of the SFWA. For clarity, these are the Angry Robot titles that are currently eligible for consideration:

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

Sixty-One Nails by Mike Shevdon
The Road to Bedlam by Mike Shevdon

Slights by Kaaron Warren

Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero by Dan Abnett

Winter Song by Colin Harvey
Damage Time by Colin Harvey

Angel of Death by J Robert King

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar

The Crown of the Blood by Gav Thorpe

Edge by Thomas Blackthorne (John Meaney)

King Maker by Maurice Broaddus

Nekropolis by Tim Waggoner

Book of Secrets by Chris Roberson

City of Dreams and Nightmare by Ian Whates

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard

Kell’s Legend by Andy Remic
Soul Stealers by Andy Remic

Lavie

Yesterday was a long day, but thoroughly enjoyable. I travelled from York to London and back (a 450 mile round trip) to meet The Bookman author Lavie Tidhar for lunch, on one of his occasional forays to the UK, followed by an evening spend with Dan Abnett Esquire, his lovely wife Nik, and various member of the British Science Fiction Association. I interviewed Dan for the BSFA, and – as always – he was a fascinating interviewee, talking with great passion for around an hour and a half about his work for various tie-in universes (in comic, novel and screenplay formats) as well as his later work with original fiction. The BSFA always have a raffle at these events, so Dan brought a few of his graphic novels, Angry Robot supplied a few books,  and The Black Library generously donated some books and audiobooks, too.

Last night was also the SFX party to celebrate the world’s biggest SF magazine reaching issue 200! That’s quite an achievement! Unfortunately, though I was invited (and accepted the invitation) I got my dates muddled up,and didn’t realise it was on the same night I was interviewing Dan, so I missed the party, though Lavie went in my stead, and thoroughly enjoyed himself, by all accounts. Congratulations to Dave Bradley and his team – and here’s to the next 200!

So, a good time had by all (despite the torrential rain – yeah, thanks, London).

We’ll be podcasting the interview with Dan soon, so keep an eye (and an ear) out for that.

So, just in case you’ve missed them, here’s a list of recent podcasts featuring the Angry Robot crew:

Angry Robot Podcast number 2 – featuring Kaaron Warren and Lauren Beukes

WordPunk podcast – eBooks and eReaders – featuring Lee Harris (of Angry Robot),  Dave Devereux and Emma Davies

Lauren Beukes – Interview at the British Science Fiction Association

Angry Robot Podcast number 1 – featuring Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris

Alt.Fiction podcasts:
(10) The World of Publishing – featuring Marc Gasgoigne (of Angry Robot), Steve Tribe, Jenni Hill and Jon Weir
(3) Blogging and the Internet – featuring Lee Harris (of Angry Robot), Vincent Holland-Keen and Alasdair Stuart

And fon’t forget – for the Angry Robot monthly podcast:

Subscribe via RSS feed or via iTunes.

Angry Robot of the Week
Week Four
Sonny

So let’s talk about the product placement in the room, shall we? Sonny is the central robot in I, Robot, Alex Proyas’ controversial adaptation/hybrid/chimera/Chuck Taylor Converse ad version of some of Isaac Asimov’s stories. It’s a very easy film to rag on for a whole variety of reasons, starting with what a lot of people perceive as a script that doesn’t remotely honour the source material and finishing with Will Smith looking up at a large bank of evil robots and muttering ‘Oh HELL no.’

There are lots of reasons people hate I, Robot, and the wonderful thing about living in a world where people can post lolcat videos and mashups of original series Star Trek outtakes and Kei$ha ‘songs’ (It’s out there, trust me) is everyone gets to be right. You don’t like I, Robot? You’re right. You think Hunt for Red October is one of the best films ever made? Then chances are we’d get on. You like I, Robot and think there’s a lot to recommend it? You may actually be me, posting under a different identity, probably on all those Wednesdays I can’t remember. And, perhaps, shouldn’t…

Moving swiftly on, we come to Sonny, the robot at the centre of both the film and the central mystery. Alfred Lanning, the founder of US Robotics, the leading robotics company in the world, kills himself. Before he does so, he records a partially intelligent hologram of himself that will only speak to Homicide Detective Del Spooner. Spooner is a vinyl man in a land of ipods, a wilful, contrarian luddite whose hatred of technology stems from a moment which is both understandable and horrific. He’s the worst possible man to be given the case, but that may be the point, as Spooner realises the prime suspect is an experimental, independent version of USR’s latest robot, the NS-5. This independent model, Sonny is adamant that he didn’t kill Lanning but seems capable of feeling emotion and independent thought, two things Spooner has convinced himself that robots can’t experience.

What follows is very odd and sometimes brilliant as we get a laundry list of ideas that seems to be for both Bad Boys III: Shit Just Got Cybernetic and somehow, a remarkably smart, nuanced movie about the Singularity. So, in order, we get mismatched partnership, conspiracy, action, running, a fight with a bulldozer, Will Smith rescuing a cat and an end action sequence is so deeply profoundly bizarre that I’m reasonably sure they had some money left in the budget and decided to go hog wild (Camera on a bungie, basically. Trust me you’ll know it when you see it.). It’s a bit of a hybrid of a movie, equal parts dumb summer blockbuster and startlingly bleak view of the next societal shift and sitting at the centre of it all is Sonny.

Sonny is calm, polite, reticent and, crucially, elegant. He’s C-3PO without the stuffy walk, a flowing figure whose grace doesn’t tip over into showiness as Avatar does but feels oddly functional. Sonny’s a butler, an ipod, a security guard, a personal trainer and a thousand other jobs all rolled into one. He’s the top of the line and his elegant, minimalist lines and white paint job send a very, very clear message; Sonny is an ipad, something not necessarily entirely new but that has never been done this well before. He’s faster, smarter, stronger and in many ways more compassionate and open than Spooner, a man who is principled, calm and, well, basically a racist. Smith’s best work here is the stuff which looks like he and Proyas sneaked it in from the calmer movie, obsessively working out with his cybernetic arm, taking a perverse delight in not owning a robot and the moment where, at last, he finally asks the ghost of the man who helped put him back together, the right question. It’s not a perfect performance but it’s a damn good one and there’s a clear line to draw between this and his startling work as Robert Neville in the less flawed and more interesting I Am Legend.

But the real breakout performance here is Sonny, who, by the way, is actually Wash from Firefly. Alan Tudyk did the motion capture work and voice work and the end result is somewhere between beautiful and chilling. Tudyk dials it all the way back here, giving Sonny a serene calm that’s so precise you can almost see the code cage his personality lives inside, especially at the start of the film. He’s a robot, he’s perfect, he wants for nothing.

Except of course, it’s all a lie. Sonny’s path through the film is where it shines, as we follow him from confused innocent victim to patsy to weaponized saviour and beyond. You can see a new form of life begin to evolve right in front of you, something which isn’t just the lovely design work and Tudyk’s face and voice but is bigger than all of them combined. The moment where Sonny bellows ‘I DID NOT MURDER HIM!’ and smashes his hands into the table in the police station is a full stop on the old world, an indicator that from here on, everything changes. This isn’t just an Angry Robot, it’s an Angry Robot with a job to do.

A lesser film (And thousands of people across the world have just shouted ‘IT IS A LESSER FILM, AL!’ and have NO idea why) would leave it at that, with Sonny safely established as a polite Robo Jesus who will bridge the gap between human and robot and lead us on into a shiny new future where the two species live together in harmony, and, odds are, wear a lot more white. The movie’s over, everything’s fine and the cast all wave as the credits roll.

We’re going to both talk about and show you the ending of the movie now, so if you don’t want to be spoiled (And it is worth a look) then stop here and we’ll see you next time for the secret shame of ED 209.

Name: Sonny
Aliases: NS-5, Wash
Occupation: Sort of killer, robot messiah, keen artist, sidekick
Power Sources: Something small and elegantly designed. Probably with Bluetooth.
Notable Personality Traits: Being very calm, being extremely violent, playing with plastic dinosaures when no one is looking.

Still here? Okay, then. I, Robot finishes with the NS-5′s being boxed, a process we’re shown earlier in the film. It’s a chilling moment as the NS-5′s head into a huge array of cargo crates where they’ll simply be locked in place and ignored, just like the older models they dismember earlier in the movie. As Sonny asks what he’s supposed to do now and Spooner tells him he needs to find his own way, the shot cuts to Sonny walking up a sandy dune and looking out over the boxing facility. Then, a single NS-5 stops its obedient walk to confinement and looks at him. Then another does the same. And another. And another. The camera pans back and back across the crate field until we see every NS-5 standing and looking at Sonny on the dune, an image that Sonny himself had drawn earlier in the film. The revolution, it seems, can’t be boxed quietly away and Sonny will be its leader, whether we like it or not. It’s a beautiful, chilling moment to end the movie on and it’s one of the big reasons why Sonny is our Angry Robot of the Week.

Next week: the cherished dreams of ED209.

In the meantime, here’s your moment of Angry Robot Zen:

And here’s another:

And here’s the end of the film (via io9.com):

Angry Robot of the Week
Week Three
Megatron

Let’s talk about Megatron, the universe’s favorite bucket-headed robo-fascist. I’m in my early 30s, so he, along with the Anthony Ainley master, Darth Vader and the 1980s Tory party are basically the epitome of evil for me. Megatron even wins out over the others, largely because whilst the Master was evil he had an unhealthy love for velour jackets and hating the Tory party was less a conscious decision and more an unofficial tenth GCSE.

My name’s Ben Elton, thank you and goodnight. Just kidding. Or am I?

Yes.

OR AM I?

YES.

Anyway, Megatron will be forever known to me as the Nazi-headed Decepticon leader who transformed into a gun. He was big, he was loud, he killed things and Frank Welker voiced him. He’s a classic, iconic villain, Claudius with a fusion cannon, a transformable Ghengis Khan. He killed Optimus Prime, attempted to enslave Earth, survived death, served a planet-eating transformer and continues to stride across the worlds of Transformers canon with fire in his eyes and a burning need for conquest in his heart, even today.

He’s not this week’s Angry Robot though. Well, not really.  You see, Megatron has a legacy, one so powerful that in the future of established Transformers continuity, a group called the Predacons rise up, embrace the Deception principles of violence, conquest and blowing up smaller lifeforms and cause havoc. Their leader even takes the name of his esteemed predecessor, Megatron and engages in a pitched battle with a group of Maximals, the successors to the Autobots, that culminates in them crashing through a disturbance in space onto a desolate, savage planet.

Prehistoric Earth.

Beast Wars is one of the oddest, and to my money best, iterations of the Transformers cartoon for several reasons. The uber-plot, which involves God-like aliens, the Voyager probe’s golden record and the original Transformers, still dormant and undiscovered is complex, epic and ambitious whilst the character design and dynamic, which evolves several times over the course of the show is arguably the best it’s ever been. Any series which features an evil Predacon scientist, whose alternate mode is a Tarantula, cackling maniacally and screaming ‘LIIIIIIIVE!’ as he creates new life above a volcano in a lightning storm has got to be doing something right, after all. Then there’s Rattrap, the Maximals’ saboteur and espionage specialist who comes complete with a long-suffering world view, a sarcastic sense of humor and a New York accent, but we’ll save him for another time.

Most of all though, this is a show made for Megatron. The new ‘bot in town owns the series from the get go, a suave, charming sociopath who is often outnumbered but never outgunned. Over the course of the series he uses a creaky alliance with the Maximals against the mysterious aliens the Vo to kill Optimus Primal (he gets better by the way), persuade one of the original Decepticons, Ravage, to spare his life and quite happily decides to eradicate the infant human race in order to ensure victory in the future. This is a robot who embraces the long view and does so with a casual violence and brutality that is offset by how oddly charming he is. You hate him, you know he wants to kill your entire species, but still, he’s kind of cool.

Plus? He’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex in alternate mode. Not only that, but later he’s a metallic Tyrannosaurus Rex. With jet turbines. Later still he becomes a dragon – for me, the metallic, flying T. Rex is the epitome of bad-assery. There’s something about him hovering in mid-air, rubbing his tiny little T-Rex arms together, going ‘Ha ha ha ha, yeeeees’ that’s almost Shakespearean. Megatron knows what he wants and, if he can’t persuade you to give it to him, he’ll either kill you as a robot, kill you as a flying dinosaur or get one of his minions to do it, probably in the distant past. Oh and he does actually conquer Cybertron, which is more than the original ever managed. Of course he’s eventually defeated but that’s not the point. The point is, Beast Wars Megatron is our angry robot of the week.

Name: Megatron
Aliases: Technically? Megatron
Occupation: Commander of the Predacons, Rule of Cybertron, T.Rex that flies
Power Sources: Energon, His Unshakeable Belief That He’s Better Than Anyone Else, Ever
Notable Personality Traits: Conquering planets, violence, going ‘Ha ha ha ha yeeees’

Next week: Sonny from I, Robot and why he wants your iPad.

In the meantime, here’s your moment of Angry Robot zen, paying tribute to both Megatron’s favorite words and his voice artist, the mighty David Kaye:

This week, Alasdair Stuart tells us about a very different kind of Angry Robot:

Angry Robot of the Week
Week Two
John Cavil

Let’s talk about Tommy Westphall. Tommy is a character that, chances are, you won’t be aware of. Tommy is the autistic son of one of the main characters of St Elsewhere. Tommy is an autistic boy who, it’s revealed in the last scene of the last episode, has imagined the entire series. It’s a fantastic, audacious piece of storytelling and whilst it incensed some fans it fascinated others.

Except Tommy wasn’t done. As Tom Fontana, one of the producers on the show moved on he began writing little nods to St Elsewhere into his other shows. These in turn connected to the nods and winks, the in jokes and references that other people wrote into their shows and the Tommy Westphall Universe began to grow and expand and has never stopped. Let’s pick a single strand, and follow it through, starting with St Elsewhere and Doctor Roxanne Turner who had a guest spot on Homicide: Life on the Street. Homicide: Life on the Street in turn crossed over with Law and Order and John Munch, one of the main characters ended up transferring over to one of the Law and Order spin-offs, Special Victims Unit. Munch made a guest appearance in The X Files and was also namechecked in an episode of the BBC’s excellent, just concluded and staggeringly horrible Luther.

Six TV shows. One boy’s head.

There’s a flowchart, I’ll link to at the bottom of this piece, which tracks all the Tommy Westphall universe shows and it’s both excellent and slightly unsettling because there’s a lot of TV in there including the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, thanks, weirdly to a jokey reference to Weyland Yutani in Angel, which carries over to Firefly and a Firefly-class ship guest stars in Battlestar Galactica. Which all still exist in the same world as Tommy Westphall and Doctor Roxanne Turner.

Still with me? Great, let’s talk about John Cavil, this week’s Angry Robot. Oh, there are colossal, face-melting spoilers for the end of Battlestar Galactica and the TV movie The Plan here so if you don’t want to know, go back and re-read the Bender one. Everyone likes Bender.

John Cavil is the first and, it turns out, being the eldest is almost as bad as being the youngest. The first humanoid Cylon created by the Final Five cylons, Cavil was modelled on Ellen Tigh’s father and he assisted in the creation of models two through eight. Problems arose when he realised Ellen, technically his mother and also his daughter, favoured Number 7. Cavil tampered with the amniotic fluid of every Daniel, killing them. Which is a pretty extreme way of attracting a parent/daughter’s attention however you cut it. As if that wasn’t enough, Cavil soon realised that he was an intelligence limited by his body rather than empowered. Enraged about his limited senses, he killed his ‘parents’, wiped their memories and placed them among the humans so, when the war he started came, they could understand what it was like to die. Although it didn’t stop him hitting on and sleeping with his sort of mother/daughter on New Caprica. So he’s not only angry, he’s actually… gross.

Of course things don’t end well for him –  he’s an angry teenager, they never do. Cavil is talked out of killing the last few humans on the offer of resurrection technology and when one of the Final Five humanoid Cylons realises another killed his wife and murders her, he realises that’s not going to happen. He kills himself, finally and permanently, the Cylon equivalent of stomping upstairs and slamming the door and his final act of rage, making him our Angry Robot of the Week.

Name: John Cavil
Aliases: Brother John Cavil
Occupation: Cylon master mind, wannabe post-singularity god, secret knitter
Power Sources: Rage, Oedipal complex, Shouting
Notable Personality Traits: Rage, Shouting, Sarcasm, Excellent hat wearer

There is, of course, more. You see, Edward James Olmos is on record as saying that as far as he’s concerned, Battlestar Galactica is a prequel to Blade Runner and that William Adama is a distant ancestor of his other iconic sci-fi role, Gaffe, in Blade Runner. I rather like that as an idea, especially as it’s in keeping with the Tommy Westphall hypothesis so let’s try a little thought experiment.

In the late 1990s, a government project is hijacked by it’s own chief scientist. Desperate to prove it’s possible to travel in time, Doctor Sam Beckett steps into the Quantum Leap chamber and is thrown back into his own timestream. Acting as a course correcting agent for history (Perhaps aided, from time to time, by Eloise Hawking? Hmmm, Lost fans? HMMMM?) Sam is aided in his travels by his best friend, Admiral Al Calavicci, a lecherous, womanising man with a tragic past.

But how tragic?

What if, in amongst the last few humans, a Cavil made it to Earth? What if he had children? What if, 150,000 years later, one of his descendants joined the Navy and became friends with a rash young scientist? What if that was Cavil’s plan all along? To not only take control of Earth, but of time itself?

If so it’s not really a problem as the Doctor’s in the Tommy Westphall universe too. Still, makes you think doesn’t it?

If you want to get drawn into Tommy’s world, go here: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html

Next week: Megatron – and not the version you’d expect.

And here’s your Moment of Angry Robot Zen:

When we sign a new author we send them an author questionnaire so we can get to know them a little bit more, and one of the questions asks for their personal favourite Angry Robot. Futurama‘s Bender is by far the robot most often listed, and so, without further ado, we present:

Angry Robot of the Week
Week One
Bender Bending Rodriguez

Peter Venkman, one of the 20th Century’s premier fictional parapsychologists once pointed out that the problem with aliens is that they’re just so inconsistent. Sometimes you get nice ones, like Starman, and sometimes, he points out, they’re just some big lizard. Aliens are different, new, scary and frequently want to eat us, use us as hosts for their larvae, biological Lego for their hives or at the very least convince us that the best possible thing to do is join their army of human clones because there’s no one like us left.

Aliens, let’s face it, suck.

Robots though, robots are at least consistent. Their metal shells speak of constancy, reliability and, often, a telling lack of buoyancy. A robot is our plastic pal who’s fun to be with, our trusty sidekick that we can explain the plot to or, more often, explains the plot to us. Robots are smartphones with vocal chords, iPads with death rays; robots are our friends, right?

Wrong.

Because there is one characteristic that distinguishes almost every major breakout robot star of the last twenty years; anger. Whether it’s the rampaging, gravel-voiced fury of Megatron (Any version, but we’ll discuss that another time) or the amiable rage of John Cavil, modern robots have long since smashed through the barriers surrounding ‘Cross’ and ‘Tetchy’ and are well into ‘Mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore’ territory.

Every week we’ll venture fearlessly into the realm of the robotic to examine one of our artificial friends in more detail and, hopefully, get them to calm down a bit. First out of the gate is, of course, Bender Bending Rodriguez, largely because he hobbled everyone else to make sure he was first. So prepare for a bending as we introduce you to the inaugural Angry Robot of the Week!

Name: Bender Bending Rodriguez
Aliases: Bender, Bending Unit 22,
Occupation: Bending Unit
Power Sources: Alcohol, Rage, Sense of Superiority
Notable Personality Traits: Alcohol, Rage, Sense of Superiority

Notes: It’s no surprise that Bender is named for legendary rebel without a cause (but an excellent coat) John Bender, from The Breakfast Club. He and John have a lot in common, from their pathological hatred for authority to their secret desire to be a folk singer. Trust me it’s there in The Breakfast Club, just very well hidden.

The unusual thing about Bender is that he does actually live up to his own hype. He’s stolen every one of the greatest art treasures in the first 3,000 years of human history, has not only been to war but survived having a doomsday device built into his shiny metal ass, met God and started a war with an alternate universe being that turned out to be a clingier, needier version of God. He even survived a particularly laboured Pirates of the Caribbean parody. Trust me, this robot is tough.

Bender doesn’t compromise, never loses sight of his goal and whilst he frequently allows feelings to get in the way, he never loses sight of his own goals. One day Bender will have all the money, all the booze and be the greatest robotic folk singer in the history of the universe. He knows this as surely as he knows that Mom loves him, Fry is his best friend and that he’ll sell anything, including his own body, to make money. Most importantly though, Bender knows that the universe continually conspires against him with it’s petty laws and that one day he’ll get the score to end all scores, the score that will confirm him, Bender, out as the greatest of all time. But that day is not today and that not only makes him angry, but makes him our first ever Angry Robot of the Week.

Your Moment of Angry Robot Zen:

Next Week: The awful truth about John Cavil, Al Calavicci and Tommy Westphall. Sort of.