Dan Dare on CD

The first Dan Dare story, Voyage to Venus is to be released on CD on 1 May 2008 by Orion Audiobooks.

The Orion website claim this is "The first Dan Dare story to be created especially for audio." Well, it's certainly the first to be released on CD as the vesrion broadcast on Radio 4 in 1990 (and which is occasionally rebroadcast on BBC7) was never released commerically.

Priced at £9.99 and running at 2.5 hours there is no word yet on who will be reading the story.

The cover (show here) shows the ship that Lero uses to travel to Earth in the Man from Nowhere story, which was the, er, sixth Dan Dare story. Hey, ho.

Here's hoping the graphic becomes a bit more relevant to the story by the time it's published.

Thunderbirds Night on BBC4

It's official - BBC4 has gone scifi mad this week. As we reported back in October, BBC4 are having a "Thunderbirds are Go!" night tomorrow (Wednesday 2nd), followed on Thursday by a tribute to Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Time Tunnel creator Irwin Allen.

This is what's on... (the highlight of which must be the brand new epiode of Stingray at 10.10pm but the documentary at 9.10 sounds great too).

7.00 pm: Thunderbirds – The Perils of Penelope
Lady Penelope finds Paris in the spring less than romantic when called to a secret rendezvous with scientist Sir Jeremy Hodge. [S]

7:50 pm: Thunderbirds – Sun Probe
A manned sun-probe runs into trouble... and so does Thunderbird 3's rescue mission.

8.40 pm: Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons – The Mysterons
2068 AD. On a Spectrum Mars mission a Mysteron city is found. Captain Scarlet is overtaken by the Mysterons and killed, but then returns to life.

9.10 pm: All About Thunderbirds

Gerry Anderson, cast, crew and fans reveal how space travel and new technology promised an exciting future, as Thunderbirds captured the spirit of the 1960s. More information on the BBC4 website

10.10 pm: Stingray: The Reunion Party

A brand new episode of Stingray, specially assembled under the supervision of creator Gerry Anderson. The material used was put together from footage used to help generate international sales, all of it unseen by UK viewers.

10.40 pm: Mastermind

Specialist subjects are the life and work of Hunter S Thompson, Thunderbirds, Kenneth Williams and the history of the Academy Awards.

New Halloween Comic

February sees the release of a new comic based on the successful Halloween movie franchise. The comic will be called Halloween: Nightdance.

The first Halloween movie, directed by John Carpenter, was released in 1978 and the ninth movie, a remake of the original directed by Rob Zombie, was released earlier this year.

Written by Stefan Hutchinson and drawn by Tim Seeley, the comic sees the return of serial killer Michael Myers. This will be a four issue mini-series and issue one will have four variant covers including a glow-in-the dark version.

The original Halloween has recently been re-released on DVD with a stunning documentary, Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, which examines all the first eight Halloween movies

Alan Grant Speaks

Judge Dredd writer Alan Grant will be presenting a lecture called Writing Tomorrow Yesterday: How Fiction Became Reality in Edinburgh on 29th January as part of the Edinburgh Lectures.

Alan Grant first entered the comics industry in 1967 when he became an editor for DC Thomson before moving to London from Dundee in 1970. After going back to college, Grant found himself back in Dundee and living on social security. It was here that he met John Wagner and a writing partnership was forged. Together, they penned hundreds of Judge Dredd’s weekly adventures in 2000AD and Grant has been writing for the title for more than 25 years, with many of the predictions made in his SF stories having come to pass in the real world.

Grant is internationally acclaimed for stories featuring heroes like Batman, Robocop and Terminator (based on the blockbuster Arnold Schwartzenegger movies). He is also the co-author of The Bogie Man, Scotland’s best-selling independent comic, and the recent comic incarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.

The Edinburgh Lectures were launched in 1992 as part of a programme of events celebrating the UK’s Presidency of the European Union which culminated in the European Summit held in Edinburgh in December that year. The Edinburgh Lectures were such a success they have continued every year since.

Each series addresses a range of major public issues in a national and international context. Over 179 high-calibre speakers from home and abroad, including Stephen Hawking, HRH The Princess Royal, Mikail Gorbachev, Jackie Stewart and John Simpson, have provided insightful and stimulating contributions

The Lectures are led by the City of Edinburgh Council and presented in partnership with The University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, Napier University, The Open University in Scotland, National Museums of Scotland, the Scottish Arts Council, Scottish Executive and The Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The lectures take place throughout the autumn and winter and are open to the public.

• To book tickets for the lecture, go here.

• More comics events on the downthetubes events page