Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a bit of a joke when Quirk Books announced their plan to publish it, but since then, the classic-lit-meets-monsters genre has exploded. Quirk has already published Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and this year they plan to release Android Karenina and a P&P prequel called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

In fact, the Dawn of the Dreadfuls teaser trailer dropped this morning and it’s better than any movie trailer I’ve seen in a long, long time. (It’s also kind of gory, so beware!)

Still, if this new classic/monster mash-up genre is going to flourish, we here at TheTorchOnline.com have a few more suggestions:

Love in the time of the Loch Ness Monster — Fermina Daza has fallen in love with a young brigand named Florentino Ariza. He returns her affections, and one fateful afternoon he takes her down to Loch Ness for a picnic — and the chance to show her his monster! (No, not that monster; an actual monster!)

Fermina realizes that Florentino and his rabble rousing ways are incompatible with the life she’s promised herself, so she marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino. He’s a good man, and he loves her, but his mission in life is to eradicate the myth of the monster of Loch Ness — or to find and destroy the monster! Fermina is in turmoil because the monster is gentle, and her heart will always belong to Florentino. Will she trade the life she’s always wanted for a chance to love and protect a beast?

[Note: It might be necessary to change the Latin names to something more traditionally Scottish. You don't want to take the reader out of the story with anything silly.]

The Werewolves of Wrath — Tom Joad is on his way home from prison when he meets his former preacher Jim Casey. Jim looks worn down and ragged, but who doesn’t? This is the Great Depression. Tom doesn’t realize that the day he meets Jim is the day after a Full Moon. Jim packs his family up and they head out to Oklahoma, in the hope of finding land and jobs and, you know, food. He’s happy to give Jim a ride with them on ol’ Route 66.

The journey is more treacherous than Oregon Trail (the game), because those settlers only had to fight against fires and thieves and dysentery and snake bites. Grandma and Grandpa die. Noah and Connie disappear. Is the Great Depression the culprit or is something more sinister afoot? And what’s that howling in the night? Always with the howling!

Anne of Gnome Gables — Ginger-haired orphan Anne has a big heart and an even bigger imagination and an even bigger mouth. When the Cuthberts take her in, she’s just hoping to find a home. What she finds is that Prince Edward Island is full of gnomes! Marilla doesn’t believe her, of course, because Anne is notoriously making crap up.

Anne recruits her bosom buddy Diana and they discover that the gnomes are planning to take over the island. Can Anne and Diana recruit enough followers from their school to fight back? Can Gilbert Blythe stop staring at Anne’s rack long enough to help? Can Anne ever admit that her feelings for Diana are much deeper than just friendship? [Product placement opportunity: Travelocity.]

Other ideas include: Little Fairy Women, Brideshead Revisited by Yeti, Hippogriff Catcher in the Rye and The French Lieutenant and His Banshee.

And if that last one ever makes it to film, I really would like to see Meryl Streep reprise her role, playing a screaming woodland creature this time around.

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At the end of the original Origins, the archdemon is slain, and the defeated Darkspawn were supposed to have retreated underground. In “Awakening,” that has not occurred. The Darkspawn are appearing in greater numbers and in new, more intelligent forms.

The expansion pack also includes a number of new abilities for the player character and a host of new other characters to play and interact with.

Because of the nature of the adventure, the player cannot choose to return to locations from the original adventure, but can carry items and abilities from the original game.

“Dragon Age: Origins introduced us to a robust, mysterious, and tumultuous fantasy world,” says Aaryn Flynn, Studio General Manager of BioWare, which makes the game. “Dragon Age: Origins — ‘Awakening’ brings players deeper into the folds to face even more complex moral decisions as the leader of the Grey Wardens and the results of those responsibilities and actions.”

Interestingly, in the press materials for the expansion pack, one enterprising website sees hints of a release date for a full-fledged sequel to Origins: February 1, 2011.

The trailer for Dragon Age: Origins “Awakening”

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THE HOBBIT’s, two films, start shooting in New Zealand in June.  Filming will take over a year. Casting in Los Angeles, New York City and London has started. The script too proceeds. The first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle Earth.

The director Guillermo del Toro is now living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons’ and the studio in Miramar.

Interesting comment about the script including “old” friends. A reference, perhaps, to cameos by other characters from the Rings movies, in addition to Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving, who are already confirmed?

Still no word on who will play Bilbo.

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• For those of you out there who, like me, are children of the ’90s, it’s possible that Baywatch holds a very special place in your memories … but let’s keep the memories to ourselves for now, okay? Anyway, the often-genius folks over at CollegeHumor.com created a pretty hilarious version of Lost’s opening credits done in Baywatch style, and it’s well worth a look.

• Syfy is apparently so pleased with Caprica that they’re looking to start another series within the Battlestar Galactica universe. May I suggest a CSI of some kind? (Kidding.) Also interesting to note in the article is talk of a show called Three Inches, about a less-than-stellar group of superheroes. Not sure how promising that sounds to me, but hey, I’ve been wrong before. You know, that one time.

• I want to toss my name in the hat to play Captain America, since everybody else is. (Think they’ll go against type and cast a skinny writer?) Apparently, Channing Tatum is now up for the role, which really burns me, because I had such high hopes for my boy John Krasinski.

• Interestingly, another contender for Cap is Ryan Phillipe, who co-starred with Tatum in Stop Loss. Who would I pick? Let me put it this way. I walked out of Stop Loss thinking two things. One: “My god, Ryan Phillipe can really, really act. He was amazing. I had written him off as just some blond pretty-boy, but man, he really impressed me.” Two: “Channing Tatum was also in this movie.”

• The good folks at Slashfilm know how to make even the lamest seeming movies look a bajillion times better. If this were the actual poster, I would totally see The Bounty Hunter.

• Robert Downey, Jr. is in talks to appear in the new Alfonso Cuaron-helmed 3D space thriller, titled Gravity. Now, let’s recap everything that’s awesome in the previous sentence: Robert Downey, Jr. Alfonso Cuaron. 3D. Space. Thriller. This has the makings of a geek’s delight.

• Cinematical has a pretty hefty preview of the new Predators film. I know that the Predator and Alien films are wildly uneven, ranging from sublimely awesometacular to the dismally unwatchable, but for some reason I salivate at even the mention of a new movie whenever one is on the horizon.

• An interview with the Big Lebowski himself, Jeff Bridges, from the set of Tron Legacy. It sounds like Bridges really is that cool.

• It seems that Matthew Vaughn would love to make an epic series based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, since he finds the world of that graphic novel series far too vast for a single movie. That would be sweet, even though we’d have to deal with all the emo/goth fanboys inevitably storming the internets and talking about how they got it all wrong.

• Just in case True Blood wasn’t racy enough for ya, series shapeshifter Sam Trammell pretty much confirmed that he and Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) are going to get all freaky with each other in the upcoming season. I bet that’ll confuse poor old Sookie.

• I doubt I’m alone when I say I’m relieved to hear that Watchmen star Patrick Wilson shot down the rumors of a movie sequel. The best way to ruin such a rich tapestry of story is to turn it into yet another superhero movie franchise.

• Finally, do you think Paul Bettany will ever play a suburban soccer dad? He’s got the best career right now, playing supernatural ass-whooper after supernatural ass-whooper. Currently he’s starring as the vampire-killing lead in Priest. Here’s a preview:

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All year long, broadcast and cable networks hear pitches from writers and producers, which they then commission into actual scripts. Every winter and spring, they order some of these scripts to “pilot,” which means the show is cast and a “pilot” episode is shot.

Ron Moore's Virtuality

This does not mean that the show is necessarily going to make it on the air. Pilots are ordered precisely so the networks can decide whether they want to invest in them. From the pilot, they can see how the show looks, whether or not it “works,” and whether casting changes are necessary. Case in point, last year Fox passed on Ron Moore’s sci-fi drama Virtuality (though the project was so high-profile and expensive that they did end up airing the two-hour pilot as a mostly-incomprehensible TV movie last July).

Many more pilots are shot than ever become TV series — though the number of pilots ordered has fallen considerably in recent years as the networks try to save money.

Still, pilots are how networks pick their future schedules.

How does the current slate of sci-fi and fantasy-themed TV pilots look? Franky, not good. Despite strong starts, high-profile genre shows such as V and FlashForward have seen their ratings sink — and returning shows such as Fringe and Dollhouse fared little better.

Their relative failure has translated into a widespread consensus in Hollywood that sci-fi and fantasy shows are risky bets, especially since they tend to be more expensive than other shows due to elaborate sets and special effects.

In short, the current thinking is that the era of genre mega-hits like Lost and Heroes is over and that genre shows will now gravitate to pay cable channels like Starz (which airs Spartacus: Blood and Sand) or niche channels like SyFy (which is airing the second season of NBC’s Merlin).

Could some future show “break out” into a massive hit, upsetting the conventional wisdom all over again? Since everything in Hollywood is cyclical, you can bet on it.

In the meantime, Hollywood is playing it cautious. Here is the smattering of sci-fi and fantasy shows that we might be seeing on TV screens this fall and next winter:

The Cape (NBC): The highest-profile genre pilot to date is surely this one, about a former cop who is framed and opts to become a superhero to clear his name. Clearly an attempt to capitalize on superhero-movie-mania, the show stars E.R.’s David Lyons as the cop, and Firefly’s Summer Glau as an investigative blogger. Simon West (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) directs the pilot episode.

Betwixt (The CW): Taking a cue from The Vampire Diaries, this is based on the young adult novel series of the same name, about three teens who are “changelings,” or the children of fairies, who can transform into mythological creatures: one has claws and fangs, one can fly. The show stars Jessy Schram (Life, Veronica Mars) and Allison Miller (Kings).

Three Inches (SyFy): Syfy has ordered a 90-minute pilot of this show about a “professional daydreamer and underachiever” who is struck by lightning and develops a “super-power” of the ability to move objects with his mind, but only a distance of three inches. SyFy has had enormous success blending humor with action in Warehouse 13, and this seems to be an attempt to build on that sort of cheeky irreverence.

2012 (ABC): ABC has officially passed on Roland Emmerich remake/sequel of the end-of-the-world movie 2012, which was supposed to be set in 2013 and tell the story of the survivors of the cataclysmic events of that movie trying to resettle the earth.

Nikita (The CW): This isn’t strictly sci-fi, but the CW is readying an update of the USA Network’s La Femme Nikita (which was itself based on the 1990 movie). Live Free or Die Hard’s Maggie Q will star — an interesting choice in a genre that almost always casts white actors as leads.

A Game of Thrones (HBO): As previous announced, this pilot, filmed last fall and based on the George R.R. Martin novel, has officially been picked up as a 10-episode series, though a broadcast date is not yet know.

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Q: Who really is the fairest one of all? — Donald, Lake Placid, NY

A: Does the All-Knowing Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle look like a magic mirror to you? Do I? Do I?!

Nonetheless, I will deign to answer this question:

For women, the fairest of them all is, of course, Snow White — although when Snow White has a “bad hair” day, the title shifts to Angelina Jolie.

For men, the fairest of them all is Star Trek hottie Chris Pine, but only because the entire cast of Supernatural was recently disqualified due to an unfortunate set-wide outbreak of nose hair. The Oracle suspects it has something to do with the cold Canadian climate, where the show is filmed.

The “official” fairest of the them all

Q: With the hype machine gearing up for the release of Tron Legacy (the Tron sequel) and with Jeff Bridges being hotter than ever as a result of last Sunday’s Oscar win, is there any chance they’ll now do a Starman sequel? — Mary, Monterrey, CA

A: There is an ongoing internet campaign for a sequel to the movie, about the romance between a lonely woman (Karen Allen) and an alien who takes the form of her dead husband (Jeff Bridges), but nothing official has yet been announced.

The once and future Starman

Incidentally, The Oracle is convinced that the reason why Tron Legacy is a “sequel” and not a “remake” is the continuing hipster cred of the Big Lebowski himself, Jeff Bridges (the original star of Tron).

This says to The Oracle that if Tron Legacy is successful, a Starman sequel is a very definite possibility — and it’s more likely to be a sequel, so they’ll be a part for Bridges, and not merely a remake.

Q: I know wizards have “familiars,” or faithful animal companions who do their masters’ bidding in magic and other things. I have a cat, Whitepaws, to whom I am particularly close. Am I wrong to think of him as a familiar? — Marcia, Houston, TX

A: Yes. Whitepaws is not your familiar.

However, you’re not entirely wrong, in that there is a being in your household with a familiar. It’s just not you — it’s Whitepaws. A familiar does its master’s bidding, right? Face it: you are Whitepaws’ familiar.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

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The series, based on the series of novels by Charlaine Harris, has proved to be a massive hit for HBO, drawing  an average of over 12 million viewers per episode when video on demand, repeat telecast, and DVR numbers are all factored in. Only The Sopranos has drawn higher ratings for the premium cable channel.

Additions to the cast this season include werewolf Joe Manganiello (Spiderman 3’s Flash Thompson), Brit Morgan (The Middleman), and Kevin Alejandro (Southland) as a hospital orderly taking care of Ruby Jean Reynolds and who becomes involved with her son, Lafayette.

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Celebrate fantasy? A web browser?

Yes. Firefox now has built in support for “Personas,” a new type of theme. Personas are sort of like wall paper. They have some sort of image, and they are displayed in the background of the Firefox window. The Persona is most noticeable on the top part of the window in the area around the buttons.

The Firefox web site has a large gallery (more than 30,000!) of Personas. Like Firefox, they are priced at an everyday low price of $0. After browsing a while, it became clear to me that there is a Persona for (almost) every imaginable interest.

There are many fantasy-specific Personas, including ones for Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight, Chronicles of Narnia, and Alice in Wonderland. There are also generic Personas featuring vampires and ghosts.

The Persona gallery can be searched. If you can’t find something that’s just right, you can easily create your own.

Firefox 3.6 has built in support for Personas. An add on gives support for Firefox 3.0 or better, and additional features for Firefox 3.6.

Some samples:

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• Amanda Seyfried seems to have forgotten her Red Riding Hood for her Esquire photoshoot, and girlfriend is smoking in a black lace body suit, or a corset, or well, anything. To hell with Jennifer’s body!

• Robot Chicken has its sights set firmly on two genre targets this year for the full-episode treatment like they gave Star Wars. Both James Cameron’s Avatar and the Twilight series are going to get the Robot Chicken treatment, with Avatar getting spoofed with its own action figures. I expect teary Twihard YouTube protests in 3-2-1.

• There are 20 Phrases To Make You Sound Brainier. My favorite? “Avatar, on a contextual level, is an abomination. But when divorced from its own merits, the sensory experiences are ceaselessly winning.” Best part? You can replace “Avatar” with “Rachel” or “Ben” or any friend and get away with calling your friends pretty but stupid to their faces.

• I don’t have a specific fantasy angle on this clip, but I think anytime you can bring the sun to a town above the arctic circle in the middle of winter, you’ve performed a kind of magic, and from the looks on the kids faces, I think they’d agree. Oh – and it’s a commercial for orange juice.

• The Telegraph spent a lot of time hanging out with Matt Smith on the set of Doctor Who. In addition to talking to his improbably mini-skirted companion Amy Pond, they got to look (but not photograph) the interior of the new, multi-level TARDIS, complete with swing.

• Friday I mentioned that it was a good year for Browncoats, as nearly the entire cast of Firefly had gigs. Now comes word that Summer Glau is joining The Cape, the “everyman” super hero show that NBC is piloting. She’ll play a low rent (blogger) Lois Lane to the low rent Batman knock-off the show is about.

• This amused me to no end, and I’d like to know what goes through someone’s mind to have them do Hutts and Recreation as a mashup of Star Wars and Parks & Recreation. I suspect it’s large doses of a psychotropic substance.

• Despite losing its Mary Jane, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway is apparently moving forward according to the Green Goblin, Alan Cumming. Oddly, he says he has “flying rehearsal” two weeks before he has “rehearsal.”

• SyFy’s next dark fairy tale reimagining is Red, which like the Amanda Seyfried movie above, is about Little Red Riding Hood fighting werewolves. SyFy tweeted the first look at their own Red, Felicia Day. I think it’s fair to say they’re going for a contemporary look.

• There’s a rumor of a Dr. Who game for Nintendo Wii. The little game system that could is being targeted because it fits neatly into the same “family friendly” demographic that Dr. Who has always attempted to occupy. Plus I’m guessing a Wiimote is a very early-edition sonic screwdriver when you come right down to it.

• Entertainment Weekly tries to settle the debate of Batman vs. Superman that’s raged for so many decades, and comes down squarely in the Superman camp, because just like Spock in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizards-Spock, Superman beats everything.

• There is a new Shrek film, and it’s a rip off of It’s a Wonderful Life. Shrek Forever After is what they are promising us is the last in the series, and I intend to hold them to that, even if arson is involved.

• Does Wonder Woman deserve the Smallville treatment? There seems to be a decent case for bringing her youth to the small screen.

• Chris Weitz gives a long interview about Twilight: New Moon. I can’t think of anything nice to say, so I’ll stop.

• We still have no idea who is donning Captain America’s tights, but we do know that he’ll have to battle professional villain Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull.

• As we prepare for a new Nightmare on Elm Street, we get a new Freddie Kruger action figure, both pre-burn and post-burn Freddie.

• Finally, Robert Rodriguez showed up at SXSW with a sneak peek of Predators, his “fresh take” on the classic franchise, that he swears will make us forget the films that came before were connected.

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Imagine that you try to save someone’s life, but she ends up dying anyway. Making matters worse, the police think it may be murder, and consider you a person of interest.

Lily Ivory finds herself in this nightmare situation in Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell. This is the first book in a new mystery series called Witchcraft Mystery.

Lily is a witch, and magic is heavily woven into the plot of the book. The added bonus — the “gimmick,” if you will — is that part of the magic is, according to an author’s note, based on interviews with “real life witches.”

Lily feels like an outsider, the result of being a witch. She’s drifted around the world for years, ever since being forced to leave her home town. Now she’s in San Francisco, where she hopes to establish roots. This gets threatened by the mysterious death, particularly when the police start checking her past.

In addition to the mysterious death, she gets involved in investigating the mysterious disappearance of a young girl, apparently the latest in a long line of children who’ve vanished from one neighborhood and never been seen again.

The plot is good. It’s not as neatly-crafted a puzzle as an Agatha Christie novel — although, let’s face it, very few writers reach that standard. But the plot is always interesting, and there is genuine suspense as to how it will turn out.

But what really makes this book, I think, is the character development of Lily. She’s an interesting character, and there’s a sense of depth and history. By the end of the book, I felt I’d only barely gotten to know her (unlike some books that make me feel like I know everything I’ll ever know about their oh-so-simple main character by the end of page two!).

Supporting characters don’t strike me as being quite as deep as Lily, but they are believable and have some depth. The secondary characters who impress me the most are the men. Often, mystery series that star a woman have men who are one dimensional cardboard cutouts who do little more than show up in time to bash the murderer over the head as he threatens the heroine’s life.

The highest compliment I can pay this book is this: I got this book as “light reading” for when I commute on the bus. I started reading it on my way home. When I got home, instead of setting it aside for the next day, I kept reading.

Pick it up. It’s a magically good mystery.

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Three and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Warning: The following review contains spoilers for the “Mark of the Brotherhood” episode of Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

So, the past couple of episodes have been real downers. Therefore, it’s refreshing that with “Mark of the Brotherhood,” Spartacus: Blood and Sand starts to return to form.

At this point, though it’s been shy of two months for us, time has marched along a tad quicker in the ludus, and Batiatus is ready for some new blood to bolster the ranks of his academy. He heads out to the market to bid on new gladiators, and after a brief bidding war with his rival Solonius, he ends up overpaying for a slew of fresh blood. He doesn’t mind, however, since he now has coin to spare, and he rather gets a kick out of showing up Solonius in public.

The new recruits arrive, and in an echo of the second episode, Doctore indoctrinates them into the ludus with his speech, only this time it’s Spartacus who provides the grace notes rather than Crixus. It seems old Sparty is really taking to his new identity as the Champion of Capua.

Ilithyia watches the goings on from the balcony with Lucretia and Batiatus, and by now her fetishistic enjoyment of the gladiators is so obvious that Lucretia suggests she becomes a patron to one of them. To further goad her, Batiatus orders all of the new recruits to disrobe, and we get a gander at what I imagine has to be one of the show’s notorious prosthetic penises. If I’m wrong, the actor playing the new Gaul slave has a lot to be proud of. A lot.

The major sub-plot running throughout is Crixus’ attempts to win back the favor of both Lucretia and Batiatus (though he uses very different methods for each, natch), and after seeing him bully around Spartacus and Varro for so long, it was gratifying to see him become the underdog.

In the scene where he challenges Spartacus to a fight, I was suddenly reminded how the show use to focus on heavy-metal-driven slow-motion fight scenes, and, in fact, that they were integral to its identity. But, as will happen, the show has evolved to focus more on the characters and less on the spectacle, so it was fun to see a bit of the old Spartacus return as Crixus and our champion threw down.

The show has also done a good job exploring the role of women in this society, and the bitchapalooza that ensued when Ilithyia brought her friends to the ludus was a fun, snarky diversion, while also setting up what will be an important plot point in the episodes to come.

I have to say, when the show began, I never imagined that Ilithyia would grow to be such a villain while her husband Glaber is largely absent, so the writers deserve credit for the ingenuity. The only character who is truly pure of heart is Spartacus, as many others, even Varro, have succumbed to ignoble desires, while Crixus, who began as a one-dimensional bully, is evolving into a sympathetic character.

The show deserves praise for taking chances, as much for its willingness to show the dark side of every character as its daring displays of violence and nudity. As I’ve stated before, it treads where other shows dare not. While it saddened me that Barca and Pietros are seemingly forgotten by every single person in the ludus, I guess I have to move on and realize that for those living in this world, an untimely death is as common as the sun rising in the morning.

Spartacus remains a kick-ass show. And wait until you see the next episode …

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