So it turns out that one of my favorite movies from last year has been out on DVD and Blu-ray since January and I totally missed it. Bad geek. No biscuit. We saw Pontypool at Crypticon last year and it blew me away. Alert listeners will know that I am the “not really a horror fan” in the Seattle Geekly team and with that in mind the fact that I absolutely loved this movie is even more surprising. It does the one thing that I think is really missing from the overwhelming majority of horror films; creating tension and suspense without resorting to just splattering gore at the screen. I have always been of the opinion that things you don’t (or can’t) see are much more frightening than anything that gets shown graphically in slasher and torture-porn movies and Pontypool takes full advantage of that. The movie is available on Netflix (and is even on the list of instant streaming titles) and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Speaking of Crypticon and horror movies, this Friday is our monthly trivia night at Neptune Coffee. By sheer coincidence, the topic is going to be horror movies and it is being co-hosted by Crypticon! The Crypticon peeps are providing some really cool prizes including at least one weekend pass to the con which we’ll be giving away as door prize, no trivia knowledge needed!

Your Monday news is under the fold

Boardgames

• We mentioned the forthcoming Back to the Future cardgame in the news section of Episode #60 and now Loony Labs has released a few more details.
  

  Now you can jump into the action of the Back to the Future movies, with this ingenious new time travel card game! Play as the descendants of Marty McFly, Biff Tannen, Doc Brown and others, as you travel back to the events depicted in the movies. Your mission is to make sure pivotal events are not changed by other time travelers before time travel itself gets un-invented. Using a unique, patented game mechanic for simulating time travel, Andrew Looney now puts you in the driver’s seat of the famous DeLorean!

  Back to the Future: The Card Game will use the same mechanic as Loony Labs’ Chrononauts card game and is scheduled to be in stores this September.

Books

• 2010 Nebula Awards winners were announced in a ceremony on Saturday. The winners are;
  Novel
  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade Books, Sept. 2009)

  Novella

  • The Women of Nell Gwynne’s by Kage Baker (Subterranean Press, June 2009)

  Novelette

  • “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast,” by Eugie Foster (Interzone, Feb. 2009)

  Short Story

  • “Spar,” Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, Oct. 2009)

  Ray Bradbury Award

  • District 9, Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell (Tri-Star, Aug. 2009

  Andre Norton Award

  • The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente (Catherynne M. Valente, June 2009)

• In keeping with Cory Doctorow’s support of the philosophy of Creative Commons, he is making his latest book, For the Win, available as a free download. The book may be downloaded in a number of formats and is DRM-free. If it is not available in the format of your choice, Cory Doctorow is also inviting fans to convert the text to whatever format they want to see it in and send the files to him.

TV

• The Fall TV schedule is starting to shake out. The fate of genre shows has been mixed. Shows that have been cancelled include Flash Forward, Better Off Ted and Heroes. Renewed shows include V and Chuck. There are a raft of new genre shows on the horizon as well. NBC has a new superhero soap opera called The Cape and a conspiracy thriller called The Event, Fox will have a far-future time travel epic called Terra Nova and plenty more shows are rumored. Stay tuned as the summer progresses for more on Fall TV.

• There is finally a trailer for season three of HBO’s True Blood. Enjoy!