Release date given for BALDUR'S GATE ENHANCED EDITION

Beamdog have announced that Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition will be released on PC, iPad and Mac on 18 September this year, with an Android version to follow a few weeks or months later.

They have also given more details about what the remake will consist of. As well as being made compatible with modern operating systems and graphics resolutions, the game's user interface has been updated, with many of the improvements from Baldur's Gate II ported back to the original game. The cut scenes have been re-rendered and new cut scenes added. There are three new recruitable characters: a Calishite monk, a half-elf wild mage and an half-orc blackguard. There's also a whole new quest, in which you create six new characters and take on a formidable challenge extending across multiple levels of a dungeon. The game features the original music and voices, but also some new music and voice work. The game's expansion, Tales of the Sword Coast, has also been integrated into the original game as well.

Of course, the 'improvements' from the new edition can be, if you wish, safely ignored if you just wish to enjoy the original adventure as BioWare intended back in 1998. Assuming this is successful, an enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (incorporating its own expansion, Throne of Bhaal) will follow next year.

BLAKE'S 7 remake announced

A fresh attempt to reboot the classic British space opera series Blake's 7 has been announced.

The original cast of Blake's 7 (the seventh character was an advanced AI and is not shown).

Martin Campbell, most famous for directing the James Bond movies GoldenEye and Casino Royale (and thus introducing two new Bonds to the franchise), has signed on to direct a pilot episode. Joe Pokaski, a writer on CSI and Heroes, is penning the script. Georgeville Television (a newly-formed production company) will handle the production of the pilot, which will then be shopped around to American networks and stations.

Blake's 7 ran for four seasons and 52 episodes from 1978 to 1981 and chronicled the attempts of a crew of desperadoes, political dissidents and idealists to bring down the dictatorial Terran Federation. The show was notable for an evolving storyline where things would change and stay changed (in stark contrast to most episodic television of the time) and its willingness to kill off characters at the drop of a hat. The series was also notable for its deconstruction of the heroic myth, with the writers constantly subverting and challenging lead character Blake's motives in trying to destroy the Federation. It was adult, thoughtful science fiction which unfortunately was made on a budget so minuscule it was barely detectable. Costumes and sets were poor and the quality of the guest actors highly variable, though the regulars, particularly Paul Darrow as the calculating, cynical and pragmatic Avon, were pretty good.

The show is also notable for its bleak ending, where the entire crew is wiped out in an ambush, their spacecraft is destroyed and the Federation left victorious. Actually, this was only meant to be an end-of-season cliffhanger leading into a fifth year, but the BBC decided to cancel the show on an inexplicable whim despite it gaining impressive ratings in its final few episodes.

There have been several previous attempts to reboot the series or make a Next Generation-style sequel, some of them sponsored by the previous creative forces and actors, particularly Darrow. The previous attempt was scuppered in 2008 when the British Sky network and ITV considered collaborating on a new series. ITV pulled out and Sky continued the project alone before dropping it a few months later.

The news of the show's possible revival is welcome. Blake's 7 was a direct inspiration on Babylon 5 (Joe Straczynski has always cited it as a huge influence) and a probable one on Firefly (Joss Whedon has said he watched the show whilst attending a British school). With its cynicism, political awareness and hard-headedness, it was the new Battlestar Galactica, but airing at the same time as the original BSG. To say it was ahead of its time is an understatement, with many of its innovations (serialised storytelling and season-ending cliffhangers) not becoming regular occurrences in SFTV for more another decade. Hopefully the reboot/reimagining will capture some of the same aspects that made the original show great. If it's treated as just another generic space opera it will fail. No word yet on if any of the original actors or creative forces will be involved.

Lead singer of Snow Patrol to cameo in GAME OF THRONES

Gary Lightbody, the lead singer of British band Snow Patrol, has announced via Facebook that he has filmed a cameo appearance in the third season of Game of Thrones. He also included a picture of himself in costume:

I gather this is more of a 'featured extra' thing than any more substantial role. It seems to be in thanks for Lightbody and his bandmates being huge fans of the show and frequently mentioning it on their webpages. During the filming of the previous two seasons, the band (half of whom are from Northern Ireland and sometimes use Belfast as a base of operations) hung out with castmembers and crew on several occasions.

Lightbody with producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff in Belfast.

Interesting news. Thrones still has a very low profile in the UK, due to its transmission on a satellite channel with a tiny audience (although Thrones is by far the most popular show to ever air on it, it's still very obscure here). This has changed a little bit as more magazines pick up on it and as the DVDs and Blu-Rays continue to sell excellently. BBC Radio 1 also has featured the show several times recently as a recommended show, and in fact one DJ got into a mock-Twitter feud with Lightbody when the latter accidentally spoiled a plot twist for him. If this kind of stunt-casting can help raise the profile of the show a little over here, I'm all for it (even if at one stage I feared madness induced by hearing 'Chasing Cars' six thousand times a day, every day on the radio).

World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Awards announced

Fantasy authors Alan Garner and George R.R. Martin are to receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto later this year.

Garner is an English novelist noted for his use of folk tales. He is best-known for his children's fantasy novel Elidor (made into a TV series in the 1990s) and his Brisingamen trilogy, consisting of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and the long-gestating Boneland (2012).

Martin, I'm sure, needs no introduction. The fact that Garner is his co-recipient will I'm sure please GRRM, as he is a fan of Garner's work and in fact has a House Garner (complete with a sigil based on his novel The Owl Service) listed amongst the noble houses of Westeros.

The convention will take place on 1-4 November this year.

Sharps by K.J. Parker

The neighbouring kingdoms of Permia and Scheria fought one another for forty years before the Scherian general Carnufex, known in infamy as 'The Irrigator', flooded a Permian city and killed thousands. The war ended with an uneasy truce and the two nations maintaining a neutral zone between their kingdoms, containing the very territory they spilled so much blood over. To help restore relations and build on their mutual interest in the sport of swordplay, the Scherians dispatch a team of fencers to tour Permia. The fencers quickly learn that they may just be pawns in a larger game as factions in both kingdoms attempt to use their visit as an excuse to restart the war or to seize power in their own land. But no-one has reckoned on this particular team and their individual motivations and ambitions...

Sharps is the latest stand-alone novel from the enigmatic K.J. Parker. Parker is known for her fascination with medieval and renaissance weapons of war and basing entire narratives around them. Usually these narratives work on multiple levels, with both extensive literal use of the item in question and also its use as a metaphor. In Sharps Parker returns to her love of the sword and the sport of fencing, which she last studied in detail in her very first novel, the excellent Colours in the Steel, fifteen years ago. Sharps is a very different book, however, to both that novel and her normal output.

Most of Parker's books focus on a single character in detail, whilst Sharps has an ensemble cast. The four fencers are the main focus, along with their manager/trainer and their redoubtable political liaison officer. Parker also visits a whole bunch of bit-players on both sides of the border as different factions try to make use of the situation for their own ends. The result is a busier feel than most of her novels, which tend to be more intensely focused (sometimes to the point of claustrophobia). This works well, with each character set up and well-motivated in a concise fashion and then developed through the novel through their interactions with one another. Each character - the deadly war veteran Suidas, the manager Phrantzes, the foppish Giraut, the level-headed Addo (the son of the Irrigator) and noble Iseutz (the only female member of the team) - has his or her secrets, demons from the past or hidden motives, and Parker flips between them with verve and ease. Her trademark dry, black humour is also very much in evidence.

Sharps is an offbeat epic fantasy novel. Blood is spilled, thousands are killed and the fates of entire nations hang in the balance. Yet we see very little of it. The bulk of the book is set in the fencers' carriage (or one of them, as the have to change wagons several times due to various acts of mayhem) as they talk to one another, discuss the political situation, play chess and argue over various matters. Intermittently the novel feels like Waiting for Godot as rewritten by George R.R. Martin, with a dialogue polish by Terry Pratchett. The situation outside the carriage changes rapidly, with riots taking place and civil war threatening, but the four fencers only hear about it second-hand through confused reports, some of which may be misinformation fed to them deliberately. Neither the characters or we really know what's going on, and both will be baffled for much of the novel's length as increasingly random events take place, only being explained in the revelatory conclusion (after which a re-read of the novel with foreknowledge of the end could be an enlightening move).

 Sharps (****½) is one of Parker's strongest novels to date. The characters are among her most memorable and fully-fleshed out, the structure is unusual but well-handled and allows for the politics, intrigue and backstabbing to be undertaken in a manner that does not descend into cliche. There's also a mordant wit which is deeply satisfying (especially when Parker directs it against some of the corniness of the fantasy genre). Parker even gives the book an ending which makes everything feel worthwhile, rather than pointless (a traditional weakness of some of her earlier books). The only problem is that the opening sections can feel very stilted until you get used to Parker's approach to this storyline. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Trailer for RED DWARF X

The first trailer for the tenth season of Red Dwarf has been released:

Red Dwarf was a hugely successful SF sitcom, airing on the BBC in six seasons from 1988 to 1993 and returning for two more seasons in 1997 and 1999. After a lengthy period trying to get a feature film version commissioned, co-creator Doug Naylor wrote a three-episode mini-series (which has now effectively been retconned as the ninth season) in 2009 for the British cable channel Dave. Although critically panned, the mini-series got very high ratings, smashing all previous records for the channel. Dave subsequently commissioned a six-episode full season, shot in December-January 2011-12 and due for airing in the autumn.

Will it be any good? The omens are not great. Red Dwarf was dealt a serious blow when co-creator and co-writer Rob Grant left the series following the filming of the sixth season. It never really recovered from it. The seventh and eighth season had a few decent moments, but overall were pale shadows of their former selves (despite relatively big budgets and use of CGI, which some fans suggested may have contributed to the problems). The Back to Earth mini-series was even worse still.

However, for this new season there are some signs of hope. Limited funds mean that they have to make more use of the classic format of the four guys hanging out on the ship and getting into weird scrapes. They are also acknowledging the ageing of the characters rather than ignoring it, which is good, and the actors seem to have retained their old chemistry.

Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER series to become a TV series

Sony Pictures TV are working on an adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series of novels. The books feature a young woman who is periodically shifted in time from 1945 to 1743 and back again, becoming embroiled in a time-spanning love triangle as well as the major historical events of each period. There are currently seven novels in the series, having collectively sold more than 20 million copies over the last twenty-one years. An eighth novel will be published in 2013.

Ronald D. Moore, best-known for his work on the new Battlestar Galactica (and, before that, Carnivale, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine), is working on the script for the project right now. The project is still in the early planning stages and no casting announcements are expected for some time.