Possible alternative title: “The Overcompensatingly Long Monday News Roundup”. Alert listeners will have noticed that we didn’t put out a podcast episode this week. We overscheduled ourselves with whatnots and completely ran out of time so we took a skip week. That’s the bad news. The good news is we’re back and ready to go this week!

In more good news, we also have a short Author Spotlight featuring urban fantasy author J.A. Pitts talking about his first novel Black Blade Blues that I highly recommend you listen to.

This Thursday we will finally be getting our Summer Movies show out so stay tuned for that.

Your Monday news is under the fold

Books

• The top five finalists in each category of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Winners will be presented during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend here in Seattle, June 25-27, 2010 and tickets are still available! Nominees include;
  Science Fiction Novel
  • The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker (Subterranean; Tor)
  • Steal Across the Sky, Nancy Kress (Tor)
  • Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor)
  • Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson (HarperVoyager; Ballantine Spectra)
  • Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)

  Fantasy Novel

  • The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
  • Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)
  • Drood, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)
  • Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
  • Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)

  First Novel

  • The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)
  • The Manual of Detection, Jedediah Berry (Penguin)
  • Soulless, Gail Carriger (Orbit US)
  • Lamentation, Ken Scholes (Tor)
  • Norse Code, Greg van Eekhout (Ballantine Spectra)

  The full list of nominees is available on the Locus website

• Another big part of the Science Fiction Awards Weekend in Seattle is the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Inductions at the EMP|SFM. Those being honored this year are: Octavia E. Butler, Richard Matheson, Douglas Trumbull and Roger Zelazny. The induction ceremony will be held in the JBL Theater at EMP|SFM. Tickets to the Induction Ceremony are free and can be reserved starting May 10 by calling the EMP|SFM box office at 206-770-2702.

Comics

• At the C2E2 convention, Dark Horse Comics announced that it would continue telling the epic tale of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian with the return of legendary writer Roy Thomas. Thomas introduced the comic-reading public to Conan in 1970, when he began the Conan the Barbarian title for Marvel Comics. Continuing where Conan the Cimmerian #25 leaves off, Thomas’ Conan: Road of Kings will tell a twelve-issue epic about the next stage in Conan’s life, beginning with a new #1 issue. Road of Kings begins this December and will feature art by Mike Hawthorne (Fear Agent).

• Marvel Comics has dropped the idea of restarting a monthly title for Spider-Girl, instead making the series that writer Tom DeFalco has been working on into a four issue mini-series. DeFalco made the announcement himself in a post on ComicBoards.com.
  

  Here’s the current deal with Spider-Girl…
  SPECTACULAR SPIDER-GIRL is going to be a 4-issue limited series.
  #1 will include a 16 page Spider-Girl story, a 5 page American Dream story and 8 additional pages (but I don’t know what they will be.)
  #2 will include a 16 page Spider-Girl story, a 5 page Buzz story and 1 page L’il Benjy story.
  #3 will include two 16 spage Spider-Girl stories.
  #4 will also include two 16 page Spider-Girl stories.

  There is also talk about an additional Spider-Girl one-shot, but I don’t really have any details on that.
  While MARVEL DIGITAL will print all the above material, they have decided to stop buying any new Spider-Girl stories.

  He also speculated that Marvel was testing the water with the limited series to see if there was enough support to justify another monthly title for the character. Spider-Girl’s original series was the longest-running superhero book with a lead female character ever published by Marvel.

Manga

• Manga publisher Tokyopop announced via their Facebook that they will be releasing a new collection of Chibi Vampire stories.
  

  In these short stories, you’ll find out what happened to our favorite characters and even get a glimpse of some European vampires that were never seen in the main series! Also included are some manga strips detailing creator Yuna Kagesaki’s trip to Seattle’s Sakura-con!

  The collection, which will be titled Chibi Vampire: Airmail is set for release in August.

Movies

• We first mentioned the Ridley Scott directed Alien prequel way back in August and there hasn’t been a lot of information since then. That changed last week when Scott started making the press rounds to hype Robin Hood. This first bit of news comes via MTV where he mentioned that he has a draft of the script. He said that the movie will be set about 30 years before the events in Alien and it will tell the story of the “Space Jockey” that was in the ship that the crew of the Nostromo finds in the original film. At another press event Scott released a couple of other details as well. Collider is reporting that, unsurprisingly, the movie will be shot in 3D and that Scott has plans for not one but two prequel movies in mind.

• The fan-produced film Star Wars Uncut is finished and heading to the film festival circuit. Straight from the production blog;
  

  We have some some very exciting news: Stars Wars Uncut is finished!

  Utilizing the Jedi powers of some very talented editors and sound mixers over the last few months, the full recreation of Star Wars: A New Hope has been recut and reedited with all your incredible 15 second scenes – and it’s even better than we could have dreamed.

  The teaser trailer is below.
  

TV

• Fox has shelved plans to make an American version of Torchwood according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rumors had been flying around the internet and the Torchwood fan base that Fox had been getting cold feet regarding Jack Harkness’ “omnisexual” orientation, prompting speculation that they might try to “de-gay” the character. When announcing that the show would not be moving forward, the BBC said that they and Fox had “mutually agreed not to progress together” and that they are shopping around for another studio partner.

Video Games

• Game Informer is reporting that Nintendo has pushed back the release date for the latest installment of the Metroid series, Metroid: Other M. The game, which was scheduled for release on June 27, has been bumped back to August 31. Metroid: Other M continues directly from the story told in Super Metroid and reportedly opens with a CG re-envisioning of the climactic scene from the end of Super Metroid. No reason has been given for the delay.