• I’m just finishing up The Hunger Games trilogy now (talk about a series of diminishing returns!), but it sounds like the movie version of the first book is really gearing up, with Chloe Moretz (Hit-Girl in Kick-Ass) as Katniss (brilliant!). If it ends up being Kristen Stewart, as some people want, I’m not only leaving the country, I’m quitting entertainment journalism.

• The Scream Awards, a “fake” award conjured up Spike TV for publicity purposes, are now open for voting. Here’s the full list of nominees.

• A podcast interview with Guy Gavriel Kay.

• Stephen Hawking says that God is not necessary to explain the universe. The thing is, I never saw God as a very satisfying explanation anyway: if God created the universe, who created God? (Just saying, “He’s always existed!” doesn’t cut it, and is basically just pushing the question off into the realm of the supernatural, like saying, “It was magic!”)

• The speculation begins: will Universal Studios be expanding the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? A tour guide supposedly says yes.

• SyFy is planning a four-hour Peter Pan prequel. I agree with Popwatch: all prequels suck.

• Case in point about all prequels sucking: Ridley Scott says that in his new Alien prequels, we learn that the Aliens were genetically engineered 30 years before the arrival of Ripley. Nooooooooo! I’ve waited my whole life to go to the “planet of the Aliens,” and I’ll go to any movie that gives me a taste of this — but this strikes me as an extremely stupid explanation for the existence of that supremely cool species.
  

• Emma Watson talks of Hermione’s upcoming kiss with Ron: “It’s not Twilight, you know,” Watson said. “We’re not selling sex. So, whenever there is any hint of that, everybody gets terribly excited.” Hilarious — and spot-on.

• How should authors respond to reviews? Some words of wisdom here, the most important being, “Authors should never ever respond to a bad review. Ever.”

• How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe seems like a clever concept for a Douglas Adams-type novel. But I confess, I found this (positive) review of the book to be so confusing that I’m still not sure what the book is about.

• The financing for Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has collapsed again. What the hell did this man do in a previous life? Was he a Nazi?

• The winners of the 2010 Hugo Awards have been announced!

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