The first teaser trailer for BBC America’s adaptation of Douglas Adams’s 1987 novel, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was featured during a panel at Comic-Con this weekend.

The 8-episode series will debut on BBC America on Oct. 22. Variety describes it as being about “the surreal adventures of a highly unconventional detective, Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) and his reluctant assistant Todd (Elijah Wood ). Together they navigate one big metaphysical mystery per season.”

Adams, best-known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, published two titles featuring Gently, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,and Dirk  Gently’s Long, Dark Tea-time of the Soul, He had plans for a third novel, which he did not finish before his death. The incomplete novel was included in the posthumous collection, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time.

Comics publisher IDW, which is also a producer for the BBC America series, is publishing graphic novels that feature Gently. These are entirely new stories that take up where the books left off.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: The Interconnectedness of All Kings, Chris Ryall, Tony Akins, Ilias Kyriazis (IDW January 26, 2016)

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: A Spoon Too Short, Arvind Ethan David, Ilias Kyriazis, (IDW September 20, 2016).

Debuting at Comic-Con is the first view of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, adapted by Starz as a TV series.

Reporting from the conference, io9 writes that, as part of the process of making the series, Gaiman looked through earlier drafts of the novel as fodder for additional screen stories. He announced that some of what he found might ,are its way into “the next American Gods book if I do another novel, which is seeming more and more likely these days.”

If that were not news enough for fans, after a very slow wind-up to get the iconic book to any screen, big or small, it seems Starz has hit the sweet spot with a spot-on adaptation.

Neil Gaiman said, “As a general rule, if you loved it in the book, it is probably going to end up on your screen.”

In a statement that is sure to thrill and intrigue readers of the novel, executive producer Bryan Fuller (Hannibal and Pushing Daisies) said the show is “fan fiction, in a wonderful way.”

Revealed as well is the news that a major element of the book, the journey the old gods take to the US, will get due attention and be treated as “trampolines into more stories.”

The Verge says more casting decisions were also announced. Kristin Chenoweth (Wicked, Glee, The West Wing, Pushing Daisies) will play Easter,  “a member of the old gods. (Her traditional name in mythology is Ostara, the Germanic goddess of the dawn).” USA Today has a run down on the rest of the cast.

The show is set to premiere sometime in 2017.

Season 2 of Amazon’s hit series, The Man in the High Castle, based on the book by Philip K. Dick, was introduced at Comic-Con by executive producer Ridley Scott.

A new trailer was released a few days ago:

No release date has been announced. One source reports it’s not clear whether it will air this year or in early 2017.

A trade paperback tie-in was released last year and a new hardcover version is set for publication in October.

Robert Kirkman is moving away from comics with his next planned TV project according to The Hollywood Reporter and now has his eye on creating the next Game of Thrones. Through his Skybound Entertainment unit he is adapting Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber, a ten-book science fiction/fantasy series.

Zelazny died in 1995 and was a long-standing and beloved figure in the SFF community, winning Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards.

Like Game of Thrones, Zelazny’s series, reports Tor.com, “concerns royal family politics over a throne. But in this case, our hero Corwin awakens on Earth with amnesia. He comes to discover that Earth is just one of many “shadows,” or parallel worlds, that exist between the two true worlds of Amber and the Court of Chaos. As a prince of the royal family, it is Corwin’s birthright to rule Amber and fend off the forces of chaos.”

George R.R. Martin is a fan of Zelazny. Tor notes that Martin memorialized the author via a blog post:

“Lord of Light was the first Zelazny book I ever read … I’d never heard of this Zelazny guy. But when I read those words for the first time, a chill went through me, and I sensed that SF would never be the same. Nor was it. Like only a few before him, Roger left his mark on the genre.”

If you need a refresher on Zelazny Tor offers a reread of his series.

If you need to add copies, Harper Voyager published a collected edition of all ten stories in 2010: The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 by Roger Zelazny (HC/Harper Voyager) as well as a new edition of his 1988 winner of both the Nebula and Hugo for best novel, Lord of Light.

Although it’s getting snowy and cold in the North of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the series is focused on summer. According to multiple sources including Vanity Fair, season seven will air in summer 2017 and consist of only seven episodes. The previous six seasons have featured 10 episodes each and they aired in the spring.

Perhaps even more troubling for fans, Vanity Fair also reports that the final season, #8, will be even shorter, just six episodes. Sources such as Variety have confirmed those numbers, leaving fans only 13 hours more to enjoy.

Showrunner David Benioff explains the truncated seasons to Deadline Hollywood:

“It’s not just trying not to outstay your welcome … We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end … Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros, Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them … The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game.”

Showrunner D.B. Weiss tells Variety that the high production values of the series are also part of the reason for shorter season because hey simply cannot make ten episodes in 12-14 months of shooting, “It’s crossing out of a television schedule into more of a mid-range movie schedule.”

The NYT points out that the late start might change future award seasons: “If the seventh season begins later than May, it will not be eligible for next year’s Emmy Awards,” continuing “Game of Thrones has garnered the most Emmy nominations of any TV show for three consecutive years, and last year it took home the Emmy for best drama for the first time.” This year, reports USA Today, it racked up 23 nominations, the most of any show in 2016.

As if to temper the disappointment over the delayed start and shorter seasons, Vanity Fair speculates that the schedule might give George R.R. Martin enough room to complete The Winds of Winter in time for inclusion in the TV series. Martin, who always has much to say on his blog, is completely mum on that point.

In a rare documentary look at a print genre, steampunk is examined in the film Vintage Tomorrows,  that begins airing on July 19th via VOD and digital.

The film features interviews with authors, inventors, fashion designers, musicians, and artists. Highlighted authors include William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Cherie Priest, China Miéville, Cory Doctorow, and Gail Carrier. Also available is a companion, Vintage Tomorrows, published by O’Reilly.

Variety reports that the movie, which originally screened at last year’s Comic-Con, was acquired by  Samuel Goldwyn Films and the release date is set to coincide with this year’s Comic-Con.

Pop culture sites are full of excited reactions to the trailer for the Warner adaptation of The Girl With All The Gifts, a zombie novel published in 2014 by M.R. Carey (Hachette/Orbit; Hachette Audio/Blackstone; OverDrive Sample). The book is also rising on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of the attention.

io9 says “The Girl With All the Gifts looks unlike any zombie movie we’ve ever seen—and if it’s half as good as the book, it’ll be a genre standout for sure.”

ars technica says “At last, a new zombie movie that looks original and compelling … Pop culture may be reaching peak zombie, but stories like The Girl with All the Gifts prove that even the most tired tropes can feel vital again if they’re done right.”

Librarians may recall the novel was an Indie Next pick and made the USA Today bestseller list. The short story version (“Iphigenia in Aulis”) was a finalist for the 2013 Edgar Awards.

The film staring Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine and Glenn Close, is directed by Colm McCarthy, who has run several hit British TV shows including Sherlock, Doctor Who, and The Tudors.

M.R. Carey is a lightly disguised pen name for Mike Carey who is best known in the comics world (he has worked on both Marvel and DC series) and wrote The Unwritten (PRH/Vertigo; coming in hardback in a collected edition Dec. 2016). Under the Mike Carey name he is also known for the Felix Castor novel series (The Devil You Know [Hachette/Orbit] is the first).

M.R. Carey’s “second” book, Fellside, another Indie Next pick, was published this spring (Hachette/Orbit; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Librarians picked it first. The number one LibraryReads pick for May 2015, Uprooted, by Naomi Novik (PRH/Del Rey; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) was announced as the winner of the 2016 Locus Award for Fantasy on Saturday, having also won the Nebula last month.

The winner in the Science Fiction category is Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie (Hachette/Orbit; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) the final book in the series which began with Ancillary Justice  winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. The middle novel, Ancillary Sword, also won the Locus award in 2015.

The late Terry Pratchett won the YA category for The Shepherd’s Crown (HarperCollins; HarperCollinsAudio and Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Pratchett and his fellow nominees in the YA category are all male, a choice that has raised eyebrows even as the Locus awards have avoided much of the controversy that has plagued the Hugo awards.

The Guardian reports on the story, saying that “the Locus awards were broadly representative of a sci-fi field that is continuing to grow in diversity: 18 female to 17 male writers, with many upcoming writers of colour among the voters’ top picks. Placed in that context, the way the YA category has turned out seems less like myopic sexism, and more indicative of the older demographic of readers who read Locus magazine and see the YA genre from their own preferences.”

However, YA author Gwen Katz said:

“YA, including YA fantasy, is a vastly female-dominated age category, but there’s a history of male authors being picked out for awards or heralded as champions of the age category … Yet another all-male slate reinforces the message that an art form primarily practised by women and girls only becomes noteworthy when a man gets in on it.”

The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (S&S/Saga; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) won best First Novel.

Neil Gaiman won twice: in the Novelette category for ‘Black Dog,’’ a piece in Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (HC/William Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), which also netted Gaiman another trophy for best Collection.

Beyond the winners, readers’ advisors looking for suggestions in SFF will find a ready list of titles in the award’s short lists.

The SF nominees read like a who’s who of the genre:

• The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi (PRH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample)

• Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson (Hachette/Orbit; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)

• Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (HC/ William Morrow; OverDrive Sample)

• A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample)

The Fantasy short list is equally impressive:

• Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample)

• The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard (PRH/Roc; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)

• Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand (PS; Open Road; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)

• The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit; OverDrive Sample)

The First Novel Short list points to the breadth of these two genres, their international flavor, and the range of subjects being explored:

• Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (PRH/Ace; OverDrive Sample)

• Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris; OverDrive Sample)

• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley (Macmillan/Bloomsbury; OverDrive Sample)

• The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Kai Ashante Wilson (Macmillan/Tor; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample)

The controversial YA category included:

• Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (PRH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample)

• Half the World, Joe Abercrombie (PRH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample)

• Harrison Squared, Daryl Gregory (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample)

• Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine; Scholastic Audio ; OverDrive Sample)

Also useful for readers advisors is the annual reading list created by Locus, a gold mine of titles and authors to know.

The full list of winners is online.

Librarian Nancy Pearl interviews one of her favorite authors, Guy Gavriel Kay for Book Lust TV this month.

The pair, who have talked several times before, start by discussing Children of Earth and Sky (PRH/NAL; OverDrive Sample), Kay’s newest book, published in May and,set in the same general world as Sailing to Sarantium (a particular favorite of Nancy’s) and Lord of Emperors. It also falls within the general universe of The Last Light of the Sun and The Lions of Al-Rassan.

Kay explains that he likes to write stand-alones rather than series as endings are very important to him and he wants each book to have its own arc. He also wants readers to enjoy every book for itself, without feeling as if they are missing an insider joke but does offer long-time readers “grace notes, small, glancing allusions to the previous books.”

The two discuss Kay’s particular brand of fantasy, which he calls a “quarter turn to the fantastic” as well as the rise of popularity of the fantasy genre in pop culture. Kay believes the rush of fantasy novels rests in the fact that the “book industry is a copy-cat industry” and much “cloning” takes place. Of his own take on fantasy, he says he likes to compress time so that readers get an immediate sense of what happens over hundreds of years.

The interview concludes with Kay detailing what he is currently reading and recommending to others: Edith Grossman’s translation of Don Quixote, Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread, and Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk.

A boon for advisors looking for SFF (Science Fiction and Fantasy) titles that will be getting attention from fans is io9‘s newly released summer reading list.

Titles that have already been featured on general list include The Fireman by Joe Hill (HC/William Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), already a best seller, and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (PRH/Crown; RH Audio; BOT). io9 says that they “really loved” Hill’s newest, calling it “a terrifying, exhilarating ride from beginning to end, … quite possibly Hill’s best novel to date.” Of Crouch’s buzzy new stand-alone, they say it is “a fast-paced thriller that deals with alternate worlds and paths not taken.”

Other favorites are Life Debt: Aftermath (Star Wars), Chuck Wendig (PRH/Del Rey; RH Audio) and The Obelisk Gate, N. K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit). Fans know Wendig for his bridge books filling in the story between the recent Star Wars film and the previous story line of the series. io9 says this newest “looks to be just as exciting as the originals.” Of The Obelisk Gate, the site offers, “The Fifth Season was a masterpiece of fantasy literature, rejecting long-held conventions and tropes, and we’re excited to see what Jemisin does next to upend genre.”

Authors and titles that might be new to SFF fans include:

False Hearts, Laura Lam (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample). io9 says it is “a debut novel that we’ve been getting excited about, an interesting cyberpunk mystery that meshes together the future of biotechnology and murder.”

Underground Airlines, Ben Winters (Hachette/Mulholland Books). A book about slavery set in the present day, the site says it shows every indication of being “a riveting alternate history thriller.”

Behind the Throne, K. B. Wagers (Hachette/Orbit). Saying it is “poised to be the next exciting space opera, one with plenty of action, intrigue, and adventure,” io9 points out that publishing imprint Orbit has a great track record with space adventures, publishing both James S.A. Corey and Ann Leckie.

There are more selections, including nonfiction. The full list is online.

Ron Howard is set to direct an adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s SF bestseller Seveneves (HC/William Morrow)  says The Hollywood Reporter. Howard will team up once again with Bill Broyles (Apollo 13), who is writing the script.

The LibraryReads and Indie Next pick was just released in paperback. In hardback it drew attention from Bill Gates, who recommended it to readers, calling it “thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable” and crediting it with getting him back to reading SF.

In their laudatory but mixed review, NPR said “The experience of reading a modern Stephenson novel is like going out drinking with 20 or 30 of the smartest people on earth, and them all deciding to play that game where someone starts a story, tells one sentence of it, ends with a conjunction, and passes it along to the next person. Once upon a time, the moon blew up, and then …”

Others offered the same blend of praise and hesitation. Several critics called it uneven (Stephenson has a problem with endings says the LA Times) and the novel’s sheer density (NYT), concerns that could easily be cured in a film, especially in the hands of Howard, who proved in Apollo 13 that he can plot a tense moonshot ending.

No word yet on when the project will begin shooting.

On the news that casting is nearly complete for Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated adaptation of Ernest Cline’s SF debut Ready Player One (RH/Crown; Random House Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample), the novel rose on Amazon’s sales rankings, jumping from an already strong #125 to #80.

After a long search, as we wrote earlier,  Spielberg found his lead in Tye Sheridan. Since then, he has added many more cast members. The latest is Win Morisaki for the role of Daito. Variety reports the “Japanese singer-actor … won the role after an extensive audition process.” It will be the first US film for Morisaki, the lead vocalist of the boy band PrizmaX.

Earlier, it was announced that T.J. Miller, of HBO’s Silicon Valley and the superhero film Deadpool, has also joined the cast, playing a bounty hunter.

In April Spielberg added Mark Rylance to the film’s roster, filling the role of James Donovan Halliday, the creator of OASIS, the game world at the heart of the film.

With other roles being filled by Olivia Cooke (as romantic lead Art3mis), Simon Pegg (as Ogden Morrow, co-creator of OASIS), and Ben Mendelsohn (as Nolan Sorrento, the chief villain of the film), Spielberg only needs to find a few more players for the game to begin.

The film is expected to open on March 30, 2018 and holds still remain strong on the book in many libraries we checked.

Attention on the STARZ adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is growing. As we reported earlier, the project has seen bumps in the road but now appears firmly on track, with an impressive cast and a hot showrunner.

In an Entertainment Weekly interview, promoting his new nonfiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction (HC/William Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), Gaiman talks about the process of the novel’s adaption, addressing his feelings of ownership and the struggle to let them go:

“My fundamental attitude is that you’re always trying to guard the soul and the heart of whatever it is, but at the same time you have to allow people to create, and you have to allow people to have fun and build and make it their own. To me it’s kind of a peculiar tightrope, and you don’t want to fall off on one side or the other … At least in script stage, I am very not shy about telling [series creator] Bryan Fuller, ‘I love this, I love this, I love this, and that thing you had, that’s over my dead body and you have to change it.’ ”

He also reports that despite his conflicted feelings the show is already on its own path, “they’re 10 days into shooting, and the only thing I am absolutely sure of is that this American Gods is its own thing … If it succeeds or if it fails, it’ll be on its own terms. I know I’ve never seen anything that looked like it.”

Last year Fuller gave an interview to Crave about American Gods, saying:

“potentially what we’re looking at with American Gods is developing a Marvel Universe, not with superheroes but with gods. As detailed and integrated as the Marvel Universe is, and doing that with deities is something that excited all of us … we may have spin-offs of American Gods that follow lesser gods in greater detail than you might in the main series, but there’s all sorts of potential for this show that we’re very excited about”

Den of Geek‘s take on that is: “In other words, this won’t just be a straight adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, and is instead being looked at very much as long form television.”

The site also has a rundown of the casting thus far, calling the recent news that Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) will play Media, “infinitely awesome.”

She joins Ian McShane (Deadwood) playing Mr. Wednesday and Ricky Whittle (The 100), as Shadow Moon.

The show is set to air in a 10-episode first season early in 2017.

Gaiman fans will have a chance to see and hear even more about the author when the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously airs on the video platform and streaming service Vimeo, starting on July 8th.

Deadline Hollywood reports, “Gaiman’s story is told in his own worlds as well as through interviews with close friends/collaborators Terry Pratchett, Bill Hader, Michael Sheen, Lenny Henry, Wil Wheaton, Stoya, JH Williams III, Lev Grossman, … as well as his chats with George RR Martin, Jonathan Ross, John Barrowman, Grant Morrison and Phillip Pullman.”

The chat has now ended. Read the archive version, below.

If you’re not part of the program, you can sign up here.

Naomi Novik’s Uprooted (PRH/Del Rey; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample; now available in trade pbk) has won the Nebula Award, one of science fiction’s top honors.

The stand-alone fairy tale for adults, a departure for Novik after her historical fantasy series Temeraire, was a hit with librarians early on, taking the #1 spot on last year’s May LibraryReads List.

In her LibraryReads annotation Lucy Lockley of St. Charles City-County Library (MO) summed up the plot: “A young girl is unexpectedly uprooted from her family and becomes involved in a centuries-old battle with The Wood, a malevolent entity which destroys anyone it touches.”

The novel also won Fantasy top honors from the librarian-selected RUSA/CODES Reading List.

Other groups took note as well: it was an Indie Next pick and made this year’s list of Hugo Award finalists.

The NYT said that “Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise” and creates a “very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic.”

io9 offered more fulsome praise:

“Novik’s writing is sharp, dense, and very funny. It’s also dark, violent, and sexual. Which is a reminder that “fairy tale” doesn’t mean clean, easy, and happy. Novik recaptures the original flavor of fairy tales in the Grimm sense, but puts her own original spin on it … I’d recommend setting aside a large chunk of time to devote to Uprooted. I didn’t intend to, but once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down.”

It’s also caught on in Hollywood, he film rights sold in a bidding war with Ellen DeGeneres set to produce.

The short list is always a good RA resource for creating genre lists, finding read-alikes, and building displays:

Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (S&S/Baen)

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Hachette/Orbit)

Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Hachette/Orbit)

The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (S&S/Saga)

Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Macmillan/Tor)

Updraft, Fran Wilde (Macmillan/Tor)

io9 offers a full summary of all winners and short list titles, pointing out that women swept the awards, winning every print category.