THE NEWS ARCHIVE
OUT OF HIS MIND
On the newly-revamped PS Publishing website, PS supremo Peter Crowther writes:
"News of horror-legend Charles Grant's poor health looks likely to cause another small shudder in the schedule... this time for Steve Gallagher's doorstep-sized collection, OUT OF HIS MIND, as Charlie is down to write the Intro and sign the sheets for the slipcased edition. The fact is that Charlie has been diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and, as a result -- and probably for the rest of his life -- he will rely on bottled oxygen to live. Alas, he and his wife, Kathryn Ptacek, are without health insurance and their need is great.
A "Fresh Air" fund has been set up to accept donations which will be used to pay the staggering expenses of oxygen and other durable medical equipment required for his care and sustenance. If you can spare ANY amount, the donation would be appreciated. There are two ways to contribute. Mail a check in any amount, made out to Kathryn Ptacek, to:
Fresh Air Fund
c/o Kathryn Ptacek
P. O. Box 97
Newton
NJ 07860-0097
USA
or PayPal Kathy at katptacek@yahoo.com
Needless to say, we send Charlie and Kathy all our love, best wishes and general good karma for the future."
REVELATION FILMS: LATEST OKTOBER ANNOUNCEMENT AND DETAILS
OKTOBER
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SCIENCE & THE PARANORMAL
From one of the UK's top horror and suspense writers, award-winning author and director Stephen Gallagher comes this dark and disturbing thriller broadcast on ITV in 1998. An innocent schoolteacher, Jim Harper, played by Stephen Tompkinson (Drop The Dead Donkey & Ballykissangel) finds himself drawn into an international conspiracy when he accidentally discovers a new drug that acts upon the shared unconscious. Unable to trust anyone except his beautiful companion Linda played by Maria Lennon, Jim must discover what the Oktober Project is, before it's too late...
Catalogue No: DVD - PAR61204 /
Barcode: DVD 5027182612048 /
Release Date: 24th May 2004 /
Broadcast on ITV Network / Writer: Stephen Gallagher / Actor: Stephen Tompkinson /
Title: Oktober /
Genre: Suspense Thriller TV Drama / Certificated: 15
No. of discs: 1 / Running time: 150 minutes
Language: English / Subtitles: No
Screen Ratio: Full Screen Colour Film
DVD9 / Region 0
Stereo Sound
DVD Special Features
- Includes footage previously not shown on ITV
- Exclusive Interview With Award Winning Writer & Creator Stephen Gallagher
- Stephen's Personal Production Notes
And we've just been told that the disc is also set to include a commentary track by Doctor Matthew Hills, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.
"I'm delighted that Matt is doing this. Not least because it'll mean the inclusion of a viewpoint on the material other than my own.
"I understand that the aim is to add an element to the disc that will enable it to be used as a study resource at A level and above. Not because it's some timeless classic, but as a piece of popular culture. Having said that, it won't be a dry or a heavyweight analysis - it's aimed at everyone.
"On the same day that I heard the news about the track, Matt was on Radio Five Live discussing the Archbishop of Canterbury and FOOTBALLERS' WIVES!"
To order OKTOBER from Amazon click here.
VALLEY OF LIGHTS
Contracts have been signed for a Telos Classics edition of the 1987 breakthrough novel.
With the text sourced from the original manuscript, the volume will include a guest introduction and an author's afterword, along with The Phoenix Diary and, reprinted for the first time since November 1983, the F&SF novelette that preceded the story.
"It was called NIGHTMARE, WITH ANGEL and it's unrelated to the later novel of the same name. But it is a direct antecedent of VALLEY OF LIGHTS.
"In 1980 I took the advance I'd been paid for CHIMERA and left my TV job to head for the United States. The aim was to stay there until the money ran out and to come back with the material for an enormous US-set novel. We toured around a lot but spent the major part of the time in Arizona, where I made contacts in the Phoenix Police and the Department of Public Safety, got to ride along with officers on patrol, and filled notebook after notebook with ideas and research details.
"My problem was that when I came home, the research proved so much bigger and more real than my original idea. I wrote the novelette, which is important to me because it was my first short fiction sale and my first to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but I gave up on the Big Book and shelved the research.
"Three or four years later, I was close to broke and just about covering my share of the bills with short fiction sales. I had an idea for a police procedural/horror crossover that I thought would make a good 7,000-worder for F&SF.
"I put the idea together with the Phoenix research and it just took off. VALLEY OF LIGHTS was the result.
"The Phoenix Diary is an account of a return trip I made a couple of years later with director Stuart Orme (THE LAST TRAIN, THE PUPPET MASTERS, THE LOST WORLD) and producer Martin Wyn-Griffiths. This time we were scouting the land for a VALLEY OF LIGHTS movie.
"If you want that story, you'll have to buy the book..."
ELEVENTH HOUR CASTING
Casting for the leading role of Professor Alan Hood is now set. The agreement's been made and the contracts are being drawn up.
"I'm going to post the news here the instant I'm cleared to release it. Trust me, it's terrific. The deal-in-principle was made last month and I got the call on Christmas Eve.
"It's killing me to say nothing more right now, but I've had to swear that I'll wait until everything's signed and sealed."
Pre-production begins later this month, and shooting will start in April.
BUGS ON DVD
The first season of BUGS is scheduled for a DVD release by Revelation Films on 23rd February.
The three-disc set will contain all ten episodes - Out of the Hive, Assassins Inc, All Under Control, Down Among The Dead Men, Shotgun Wedding, Stealth, Manna From Heaven, Hot Metal, A Sporting Chance and Pulse.
Extras include cast and crew biographies, photo gallery, episode synopses and audio commentaries.
ED GORMAN'S WEBLOG
Steve has agreed to become an occasional contributor to the weblog-of-many-hands featured on the site of front-rank crime novelist and editor Ed Gorman.
Visit Ed's place by clicking here.
"Ed did me the great honour of inviting me, and then I promptly got stuck into an ELEVENTH HOUR script rewrite that's kept me from contributing for several weeks. I've got some grovelling to do..."
GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS
News has surfaced on the website of the Ghost Story Society of a documentary on the life and works of M R James, currently in production for British television.
The documentary, which has been filming at Eton and will include an interview with A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS director Lawrence Gordon Clark, is for the digital channel BBC4.
The channel plans to screen all of the classic James adaptations, possibly the most fondly remembered pieces of event television of the 1970s.
Last year the films were given a season at the NFT. Two of the titles have been released on DVD by the British Film Institute, but this will be a rare opportunity to get a record of them all.
GOD OF THE RAZOR
Steve has contributed a novella titled THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN to this forthcoming Subterranean Press anthology.
The anthology consists of stories that feature or make reference to the supernatural character who made his first appearance in Joe R Lansdale's intense slasher story of the same name.
DREAMWATCH
From the guest column in the current issue of Dreamwatch magazine:
"It was a fertile period, and STAR WARS allowed it to happen. It was a great time to be a fan. The downside is that if you felt the first impact of something like ALIEN, it's hard to get too excited when a PITCH BLACK comes along. And in a way, we've taken some backward steps; my heart sinks at the prospect of committing two hours of my life to a movie in which I just know that the last act is going to consist almost entirely of two CGI characters slugging it out in a CGI world. The SPIDERMAN I really want to see would model its action on that French bloke who took his shirt off and skipped across the rooftops in the BBC Sport promo. Make me believe it's really happening, rather than concede from the outset that it isn't. If you want to make a cartoon, make a cartoon..."
For the rest, see issue 121 of Dreamwatch.
DREAMWATCH
Steve is the Guest Columnist in issue 115 of Dreamwatch magazine, out now.
ELEVENTH HOUR - THE SHOW PREMISE
From the very beginning this show's always had one simple premise which is, Quatermass and Emma Peel taking on science's bad guys. A classic pairing of an Authoritative Male and a sexy, athletic Femme Fatale. One big story per episode, built around and dependent upon an actual science topic. Proper, self-contained, standalone stories, no B-stories or multiple storylines. 'Science's bad guys' being a loose definition that could encompass anything from a tobacco chief to a live volcano. Two characters with very little baggage, both literally and figuratively - we've a sense that their lives continue outside the frame, but we don't ever go there.
DREAMWATCH
From the guest column in the current issue of Dreamwatch magazine:
So there I was, in a meeting room on the sixteenth floor of the London Television Centre. We weren't exactly cloistered away, as the drama department is one of those open-plan newspaper-style workspaces and the meeting rooms are glass-sided. And besides, we had the door open. Across the office, I could hear Granada's Controller of Drama talking to a journalist on the phone.
"It's called Eleventh Hour," he was saying. "It's a thriller series set in the world of science. The main character's Professor Hood. He's the government's Science Tsar."
He stopped to spell it.
"He deals with disasters and crises that have a science element. Him and his glamorous assistant. No, we're not actually doing anthrax. No, it's not a Doctor Who for the new millennium, it's entirely contemporary. Hang on, the writer's right here, he's the one to ask." He half-covered the phone. "Stephen! He wants to know if it's science fiction."
For the rest, see issue 118 of Dreamwatch.
BRIAN CLEMENS ON OUT OF HIS MIND
From Brian Clemens' introduction to the short story collection:
"It’s a cliché, I know, but I honestly could not put the book down. Steve has written a stunning array of proper short stories, not the ‘amorphous, all-glittering prose with finally an ambiguous, barely discernible point’ kind, but rather hard, strong yarns, beautifully structured, finely characterised and filled with not only readable but also speakable, ruthlessly real dialogue calculated to amplify character and advance the plot of each little jewel."
For the rest of the piece, see the book!
Available to order from the PS Publishing website.
Scroll down this page for more details.
ELEVENTH HOUR
Francis Hopkinson has now joined the show as Producer and Executive Producer. Francis began his career with Zenith (where he was a runner during the production of CHIMERA) and has worked with Tony Garnett's World Productions. His credits include the BAFTA-winning THE COPS, THE JURY, DANIELLE CABLE - EYEWITNESS and and the Ray Winstone ratings hit HENRY VIII.
"Francis's first move was to negotiate a longer schedule so that I'd have more time on the scripts and we'd have a better 'window' to go after the cast that we want.
"This is very good news. The original transmission date of February 2005 effectively meant that I'd have four months following the green light to turn out four ninety-minute screenplays, three of them from scratch and each of them with a single, ambitious story around a major science topic. That's because we'd have to start casting and pre-production in August at the latest to meet an end-of-year deadline for finished episodes. I'm not saying I couldn't have done it. I'm just happier now I don't have to."
BRIAN CLEMENS
Legendary screenwriter and producer Brian Clemens has written the introduction to the short story collection OUT OF HIS MIND.
Clemens, who began his career in the advertising industry but entered film production as a contract writer for the Danziger brothers, has one of the most impressive CVs in all of British TV.
"I can hardly believe this. He wrote the pilot episode for DANGER MAN (US title: SECRET AGENT) and script edited the first series. I suppose you could say that he was a showrunner before the term was even invented. His work on THE AVENGERS, not only as a writer but as associate producer and then producer, has been one of the defining influences on my own career.
"And then he went on to THRILLER, THE PROFESSIONALS... he's even written a Ray Harryhausen movie. How cool is that?
"When were co-consultants on BUGS, I'm told that our script notes were in exact agreement about fifty per cent of the time and complete mirror-opposites the rest of it - which I hope I'm right in thinking is a healthy situation!"
From the PS Publishing website:
