Welcome to 2009, folks. All of us on SFX wish you a happy New Year!
Don't let the worsening economic climate get you down, think of all the great sci-fi stuff that's happening in the next 12 months. Big movies (Watchmen, Star Trek, Wolverine, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Terminator Salvation), the Doctor Who TV specials and The Prisoner back on our screens, the finale of Battlestar Galactica, new books from Ken MacLeod and George RR Martin (plus the continuation of Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series by Brandon Sanderson), Neil Gaiman's take on Batman in Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, and big games such as Ghostbusters, Deus Ex 3 and the massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic.
There are stacks of other things to keep an eye out for too, as anybody who read our preview feature in SFX 178 (still on sale) will recall. What are you most looking forward to? Let us know in the comment thread below.
In the real world, this year should see the Virgin Galactic space port in New Mexico being completed. And at long last the Large Hadron Collider - which generated far more publicity than actual Higgs Boson particles - is scheduled to be repaired and rebooted.
2009 is a big ol' year in many fictional universes too. Do you remember the film Freejack starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger? That's set in 2009. More recently, both I Am Legend (the events triggering the story begin in December) and Cloverfield (it takes place in May) are said to kick off in 2009. On TV, according to Charmed's chronology, Phoebe Halliwell is burned at the stake in February, and the backstory of Dark Angel takes place this year too. Many Nu-Who episodes (for instance "Last of the Time Lords", "The Sontaran Strategem" and "The Stolen Earth") are all thought to be in 2009. Meanwhile, the alien-invasion shoot-'em-up PC game Incoming was set in 2009, as were chunks of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Splinter Cell Double Agent and the recent zombie thriller videogame Left 4 Dead are also 2009-based games.
People on our forum are wishing each other a happy New Year now. Come and have a chat! See you on Wednesday 14 January for our latest issue, which will have (you heard it here first) Wolverine on the cover.
All our best wishes,
Dave and the SFX team
