The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

The SFX Weekender was held over the weekend (well, duh!) and among the panels and cosplay and discussions and drinking there were, of course, the annual SFX awards. The Geek Syndicate boys were live-Tweeting them as they happened (thanks, Nuge) and SF Awards Watch has handily compiled them all. Neil Gaiman won the Best Novel award for The Graveyard Book, David Tennant won the Best Actor gong, although Who lost out to Supernatural for Best TV Show, a bit surprising considering its often hidden away on cable channels and has nothing like the audience figures for Who, but it does boast a very devoted following who doubtless voted their support for it. Neil Gaiman won again for the Best Graphic Comic/Novel category for Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, which has already sparked a bit of discussion on Twitter – we all love Neil’s work and that was an interesting short tale but the best comic of the year? Really? Or was that more likely folks voting for their favourite writer rather than the best comic? And before anyone writes in to say how dare I criticise, please bear in mind I’m a huge fan of Neil’s work, but I still can’t see how that took the gong over some much more deserving works. Still, its not an SF or comics awards ceremony until we all start debating it, is it?!

(Neil Gaiman signing at last summer’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, pic from my Flickr; you can listen to audio of the entire event with Neil, Ian Rankin and Denise Mina on the blog here)

There was even more exciting Gaiman-related news from the SFX bash though – for years now its been hinted that Neil had been asked to pen a script for the ultra successful revived Doctor Who series. The thought of that made me and many others rather delighted, but so far its been only a teasing fantasy (see Pádraig’s 2008 interview with him here). Last night it came out on Twitter that Neil was indeed to write for the show at last and since Neil later said he’d given the SFX boys a scoop, as Cheryl Morgan notes that sounds like proper confirmation and later SFX posted it on their site too. Neil’s story should appear in an episode due to air in 14 months, so the second Matt Smith season by the sounds of it. Many will recall J Michael Straczynski pestering Neil for years to pen a script for his mould-breaking Babylon 5 series before it eventually happened (“Zooty – Zoot Zoot!”) with the Day of the Dead episode late in the show’s run. Well its something to very much look forward to and since Neil, like many of us of a certain age in the UK, grew up with the original show I’m guessing he’s pretty pleased about a chance to be involved with it too.