You can tell this was taken Friday morning, because we're all still standing

Were you one of the legion of sci-fi fans having a jolly at a Pontins in Prestatyn this weekend? If not you missed out on two (and a bit) days of geekery, slightly naff food and the sight of team SFX running about like lunatics to make sure this year’s event didn’t collapse under the weight of its own awesome. We survived (just) and arrived back in the office to a very pleasant surprise – SFX issue 219 featuring a whole load of Hobbity goodness. Best of all it’s on sale now, so you can find out why we’re still the galaxy’s greatest sci-fi mag. Even Christmas doesn’t come close to generating the kind of buzz in the SFX office right now.

Buzz is handy, because it’s just about the only thing keeping the denizens of SFX towers awake after the somewhat (read: extremely) exhausting Weekender. Hero of the weekend Rich managed to watch approximately nothing all weekend due to his valiant efforts behind the scenes, besides the awards which he was overseeing from the sound desk up in the bleachers.

Rich: “My highlight, as ever, was meeting and chatting with so many top people, whether they were TV stars, authors, publishers or readers. And I’m still loving Neil Gaiman’s acceptance speech.”

Dave B’s highlight of the event could only be having dinner with SF legend Brian Aldiss and his wife, and Stephen Baxter: “Charming, witty people who fully deserved their standing ovation at the Awards that night. It was a privilege to get them to myself for a couple of hours,” he said. Being SFX overlord does have its perks.

“Just A Minute on stage was awesome, although next time I promise to bring a whistle. The only thing funnier than the on-stage banter between Paul, China, Joe, Sarah and Toby was me suddenly realising I’d have to put my hand up and shout stop when the clock ran down.

“A big shout out to the incredibly geeky fantasy conversation I had in the Screening Zone bar with the likes of Paul Cornell, Simon Kavanagh, Graham McNeill and more lovely people, that took in everything from Chaucer to David Gemmell to playing Lords Of Midnight on the ZX Spectrum.

The view from the stage. Scary.

“Also, I got to hug Kosh from Babylon 5. I think it might have been SFX regular Llama God inside but I’m not sure – when the encounter suit opened, I saw… nothing.”

Nick’s highlight of the Friday night was the annual Tor UK party. “This year reaching the location entailed a drive through a maze of deeply dark and spooky country roads. I spent most of the time waiting to see a giant flaming goat’s head materialise in front of us down some narrow, Sat-Nav defeating lane…

“Saturday night saw me roped in at the last minute to provide the voiceover for the SFX Awards. I’ve lost count of the people who’ve told me I have a future advertising Allied Carpets.

“Craig Charles’ DJ set was as brilliant as ever. I want to steal his record collection. Danced like a loon til 3 am. Then died of pure disco.

“But nothing tops hearing Brian Blessed roar “Gordon’s alive!” in the Green Room. My eardrums have never felt so privileged. Or perforated.”

Ian’s highlights of the weekend: getting a big hug from Eve Myles after our Q&A; the beam on my wife’s face as I introduced her to Eve shortly thereafter; insulting Dave Golder repeatedly (in character, obviously) for the Blastermind quiz; dancing on the side of the stage on Saturday night, loaded up with free booze from the Green Room (that Phil Ford is quite a mover…); finding help for someone who tweeted that their electricity had blown at midnight on Saturday, after the office had closed, and feeling briefly heroic.

Ian’s lowlights of the weekend: the bowel-nuking terror that is the last half-hour before you’re due on stage; painstakingly preparing questions for Anthony Head, then having to chuck them in the bin; painstakingly preparing questions for Sophie Aldred (it briefly looked like we might do a Q&A with her in Anthony Head’s slot), then chucking them in the bin too because she had to leave early; queuing in arctic conditions for the chip shop (or rather, watching as Rob heroically queued for the chip shop. Still, at least we got a taste of how the rest of you suffered…); generally not being in a position to help/fix problems more – we do care, y’know.

Russell – who did an exceptional job along with Catherine, Jon, Steve Jarratt, Steven Gotobed and Will Salmon on the signing queues under exceptionally difficult circumstances – had a typically leftield list of highlights:

“Comparing phone signals with Colin Baker, he and I both mystified that although we were both on O2, my signal was stronger than his.

“Dancing (I use that term loosely) at the side of the stage while Craig Charles did his thing, and then being somewhat surprised to see the police behind me: luckily they only wanted a photo with him!

“Buying the delightful Anjli Mohindra (Rani in Sarah Jane) a drink at the bar and then chatting about how fantastic David Tennant was.

Greatest. Awards. Ever.

“Listening to Brian Blessed come out with one long and hilarious anecdote after another while he was signing, and making every single person feel special after meeting him

“Cuddling both Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy – because they are both very cuddly indeed

“Chatting to Mark Buckingham’s adorable wife Irma Page in the green room over a tuna sandwich with too many red onions in (you had to be there – but I’m glad you weren’t).

“…And generally meeting so many lovely, clever, friendly, great people all drawn together under one big cosy community umbrella.”

Ade’s liver is in slow recovery mode from drinking pints of wine with Eve Myles (yes, pints), Sambuka shots with Anjli Mohindra and all-night drinking sessions with Craig Charles: “Massive thanks to everyone who came to the Cosplay Competition. Everyone of you where winners in my eyes. Special thanks to everyone who bid in the Great Ormond St Auction too. Just amazed at your generosity.

“Dave Bradley said I looked dead Sunday morning before the four hour drive home and hell did I feel it! But you know what? It was all worth it just to have partied with you all, and you made it one hell of a Weekender. You lot sure know how to party!”

Whatever you do, don't drop it.

Jordan is convinced the Weekender has given him superpowers, because not only did he wake up on Sunday morning without a hangover, on barely four hours sleep, but he hasn’t developed con flu, came into work on Monday and isn’t walking round in a waking coma. Clearly something’s not right here… His highlight, of course, was meeting you lovely lot (particularly the woman who told him his Supernatural reviews were the favourite part of the issue every month), but other special memories include: hearing the few gags from his awards script that made it through Robert Rankin’s filter get big laughs, presenting the cake at the 2000AD’s 35th birthday party, hanging with the Hollies backstage, a dance-off with Jes (and with the rest of the SFX crew) on stage while Craig Charles played his incredi-set, and the first time he saw the glory of Russell’s Green Hornet costume. Fun times indeed.

Rob’s eardrums are still in recovery after the battering they took from Brian Blessed, and he still can’t quite believe just how little he had to say to the great man. Easiest. Interview. Ever. Meeting Dredd creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra will stay with him til the day he dies (as will Mr Wagner’s priceless reaction to Robert Rankin’s special awards outfit). Additional excellent Weekender memories include Tony Lee and Dan Boultwood in general, but more specifically: gin, Al Ewing rocking the 2000AD party, Tharg’s gracious speech at the same, Jes ‘Lyrical J-Bombb’ Bickham’s relentless stream of pocket-based gaggery, the incredible reaction of the Main Void to Blessed and of course meeting all the beautiful people who made the trip to Prestatyn. Roll on 2013…

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Random Quote Of The Weekend: “No, it was the porn FIRST, THEN the Nazi propaganda film.”

Freebie Of The Week: In case you weren’t at the Weekender, or didn’t see our post online, the brilliant SFX Sci-fi Quiz app is now 100%, no-strings-attached free. There’s no excuse not to.

Whose Spirits Funnel? (last, er, whenevers answer: they were Dave G’s socks!)

Argh, it’s only three weeks exactly the Weekender! Needless to say we’re all very excited and not nervous in the slightest. Nosiree. As if that wasn’t exciting enough our new issue went on sale yesterday, issue 218 featuring the rather dashing Winchester brothers on the cover and the slightly less appealing flaming phizzog of Ghost Rider.

As you can see from the flip through (sorry for the slightly squiffy framing) this month we have a world exclusive Being Human series four feature with an episode guide by creator Toby Whithouse, there are 20 Reasons We Love The Prisoner and we go one on one with the lovely Deborah Ann Woll. Hopefully Jordan will shut up about meeting her one day.

We’re light on numbers in the office today through a combination of people taking days off, working from home, meetings in London, caring for their little ’uns and grievous bodily injuries, which might explain why we’ve all been suspiciously productive this morning. Only a brief foray into discussing the merits of The Crow (Jordan loves it, Rich and Dave G aren’t so keen, but they’re wrong) has sidetracked the team from their primary directive to get issue 219 out of the door.

Dave B’s the one in London today, wheeling and dealing, meeting and greeting, and having posh Italian lunch with the good folk from Manga UK, while Nick’s the one spending a day of R&R in Cardiff with a bag of chips. Jon, meanwhile, has discovered just how awful Lost Boys II is – in fact he only watched half of it. A huge fan of the original, he was heartbroken to see where the franchise went.

Some good news for smartphone addicts! Our IT boffins have fixed an issue with the mobile version of sfx.co.uk, which meant it was taking rather a long time to update. So if you’d given up on checking out sfx.co.uk on your phone because the news stories all seemed a bit ancient, give it another try! We’ve also identified some formatting issues that were causing problems. This should all mean a lot less “page not found” messages – but if you do get any 404 errors, do tweet at us so we can look into them.

Proof, wizard blood!

Dave G discovered he’s descended from aristocracy! It’s not quite royalty but he’s still impressed after his father’s cousin put together a Golder family tree. Most interesting of all, however, is that he discovered he’s a mudblood! No really, he’s descended from a Snape – look if you don’t believe us. He’s going to test the theory and try leaping off the roof of SFX towers with a broom later.

Ian’s week has been dominated by old-school Doctor Who (no change there, then…). He was fascinated to learn that April Walker was the original Sarah Jane Smith, but fervently hopes that 2entertain aren’t going to make a habit of breaking news stories on the text commentary for episode five… Secondly, he’d like to urge all of you to buy Hartnell tale “The Sensorites” when it comes out on 23 January. Not for the story, which is pretty dreary, but for the superb featurette “Looking For Peter R Newman”, in which Toby Hadoke searches for info on the late writer of the story, about whom practically nothing was previously known; not only is it proper investigative journalism, but the results are surprisingly touching. Thirdly, a couple of AWOL Christmas presents finally turned up in the post, which means he’s steeling himself to watch “Paradise Towers” (shudder). But right now, he’s sitting at home preparing to transcribe half an hour of most enjoyable chat with Who scribe Gareth Roberts about his forthcoming novel of Tom Baker tale “Shada” (the story never completed due to industrial action).

After a challenge set by the PR team of new sci-fi superhero flick Chronicle the SFX team has been trying to work out what people’s talents are. Dave can peel off a yoghurt top in one go, Jordan can make owl noises with his hands and Russell laid claim to picking CDs out of his rack when people name them at random, but we reckon his ability to instantly give the year of a film as more worthy.

Jordan’s now passed the 120 hour mark on Skyrim and is starting to get concerned about his debilitating lack of sleep because of it. He’s decided to go cold turkey for a little while and has even taken the little map off his wall to resist any temptation. We give him 24 hours before he’s lopping off heads with a flaming Daedric sword again.

Ade is getting very excited about some money-can’t-buy items he’s received for the SFX Weekender Charity Auction this year! A list of some of the items on offer can be found elsewhere on this site, but lets just say he’s received support from the cast of True Blood, Red Dwarf, and some geezer called Matt Smith. Its all in aid of Great Ormond St Hospital. Start saving because you won’t want to miss this important part of the Weekender.

Random Quote of the Week: “It’s the one where you get to sleep with Yvonne Strathovski, how could you forget about it?”

Whose Socks? (last week’s answer: it was Dave B’s Portal t-shirt!)

Jordan has a pen with wheels. Greatest stocking filler ever.

Happy new year dear readers! It’s day three of 2012 in SFX Towers and the apocalyptic weather of the past 72 hours has us convinced there might be something to all this Mayan mumbo jumbo. That said we’re not overly fussed about the world crumbling beneath our feet so long as we get the chance to see The Dark Knight Rises, and Prometheus, and The Amazing Spider-Man, and all your faces at the SFX Weekender 3 first. There’s no way 2013 could top the year we have in store.

But that’s enough about the future, it’s important to live in the here and now. Which is why we spent the first few minutes/hours of 2012 in the office discussing Christmas telly, er… In the interest of full disclosure we have to confess that the overriding opinion was that the best thing on telly over the festive period was the brilliant first episode of Sherlock series two. Though with Moffat and Gatiss calling the shots it feels like an honorary SFX show anyway. Who, controversially, was met with a resounding “meh” from several members of the team, while Merlin split the office down the middle. And The Borrowers? Great fun, but we don’t remember Spiller as a mini-Nathan from Misfits, just, you know, without the swears.

Rob's broken both his hands. A supervillain origin story if ever we heard one.

There were very Merry Christmases all round. Most family-based (with the rollercoaster of emotions that comes with it), but spare a thought for Rob, who managed to break BOTH his hands on New Year’s Day after a tumble through a table. We know what you’re thinking but the irony is that, after a long drive home, he was stone cold sober – one of the few days of the holidays he hadn’t touched any tipple whatsoever in fact. The good news is he has enough fingers free to make the perfect burger holding claw and plenty of time to catch up on his comics. Just be gentle with him at the Weekender, eh?

Rich is “easing” himself into 2012 by cracking on with all manner of exciting Weekender stuff, contemplating the wonder of finally entering the Blu-ray age, and digesting the rather good M:I Ghost Protocol, which he saw last night (“it’s not as good after Dubai, but still a superior actioner”). Rich’s best TV of the Christmas break? The peerless Sherlock – and he was one of those not quite so fond of Moffat’s Who Christmas special, though he thought it pretty enjoyable too. Even if Bill Bailey was completely wasted (by which – for the benefit of any libel lawyers – he means underused, not under the influence).

As well as helping Russell get the latest vampire special to press, Dave B is working away furiously on Weekender preparation and persuading people to download the SFX Sci-Fi Quiz App. Hey, it’ll help you prepare for the fiendish Blastermind quiz at the event (this year to be held in the new Screening Zone so there’s room for more participants). Guess what? The Weekender has all but sold out! Dave’s life outside the office consists entirely of smithing iron daggers in Whiterun and cutting the heads off ice trolls with the help of his faithful dog Vigilance.

Speaking of Skyrim, Jordan took a temporary break from dragon-slaying and tramp-beard-sporting to play The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword over Christmas. After adjusting to the (amaze-o-tron) motion controls and Wii’s blur-o-vision he declared it the “greatest game of the year, maybe even the best Zelda ever!” He’s over that temporary bout of madness now (it’s no Ocarina Of Time) but he still ranks it above Mass Effect 2, Arkham City and Skyrim, and anyone whose read his ramblings over the past year will know they’re big words. TV and film had nothing on videogames in 2011. He and the rest of the team have also been scratching their heads over an office mystery – whenever Catherine stands up, her phone’s speaker mysteriously turns itself on. Maybe we should give Benedict Cumberbatch a call. Or the Ghostbusters.

Could you win Cat's coat at the SFX Weekender?

Despite living less than two minutes away from each other, it’s rare that Nick and Jordan cross paths on the walk into work. Today was one of those rare occasions. Topic of discussion: the price of DVDs, which segued into a chat about laser discs and the format wars before the front door of SFX towers rudely interrupted a riveting discussion. Speaking of Nick, his snug, Das Boot-esque jumper was cause for the second reference to the film/mini-series in as many days – the first being during Russell’s explanation of why he dislikes underwater films (except 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) – another one of his “unique” quirks. He’d make a great sitcom character.

Ian’s working from home today, desperately trying to interpret the meaning of notes haphazardly bashed out on his laptop about three months ago as he struggles to write a Couch Potato feature. After spending a good twenty minutes pondering what the phrase “turf merkin” has to do with The Fog, he still has absolutely no idea. Ah well.

Ade had a fantastic Chrimbo and spent most of it watching his Star Wars Blu-rays, whilst drinking and eating nothing but dirty food in his new Obi Wan dressing gown. He’s now back in SFX towers, busy with the next issue, and of course the SFX Weekender, which is but a few weeks away! He’s very excited about all the amazing items coming in from his sci-fi chums for the Charity Auction he’ll be hosting at the Weekender, including a genuine coat worn by the Cat in Red Dwarf (thanks to Stephen from the Prop Store of London). Start saving folks!

Random Quote Of The Week:
“How do you go to the toilet?”
“There are gymnastics involved.”

Whose T-shirt?: (last year’s answer: it was Ade’s tshirt!)

Who would wear a tshirt like this?

You should have seen us after the food fight.

Merry Christmas everyone! What, too early for festive greetings you say? Well, not for team SFX, because on Monday Bath’s sci-fi massive moseyed on down to a local eatery for a spot of yuletide indulgence in the form of delicious Christmas pies. It may have been early but it was a wise move, with traditional pre-Christmas deadline madness looming there’ll be no time for such things as “fun” or “eating” over the coming weeks.

That said, with Comic Heroes editor Jes in Bath for a few days and Jayne Nelson, formerly of this parish, paying our delightful Roman city a visit on Tuesday, the team have been spending their fair share of time in the pub. And there are more tasty Christmas treats floating round the office today than any one human could reasonably consume in a week. The less said about the choice of tracks on the office stereo, however, the better.

Russell, who made good use of the question “Are you Polish?” this week, has been starting work on the next SFX special (“It’ll be great!”) while glowing somewhat, thanks to nice comments on the forum about his Doctor Who Bookazine. It’s selling out fast folks, so to be sure to get hold of it before it’s too late. He’s also excited because Captain America is on the way to his house as we speak, courtesy of Lovefilm “I hope it’s better than how I dreamed it last night – it wasn’t that great in my dream.”

Nick - a born silent film actor

Possibly inspired by our Paranormal Special, Sunday saw Nick strapping on the proton pack and taking a trip to 50 Berkeley Square, reputedly The Most Haunted House In London. Sadly there was no sight of any paranormal activity from the attic room, but he did notice a distinct dip in the temperature. But that may just have been London in December. As you can see from the photographic evidence, he ain’t afraid of no ghosts.

This week Ian has been mostly: transcribing Being Human interviews (it makes you feel a lot better when the show’s creator can’t remember whether it’s season three or four); watching “Spock’s Brain” for a back-page tribute; laughing at the eggbox T-Rex in Pertwee Who “Invasion Of The Dinosaurs”; and trying not to think about David Cameron having sex with a pig.

Aside from working hard on a top secret project (keep an eye on the website in the new year), Rob’s been busy interviewing writer-man extraordinaire Jack Thorne (of The Fades fame), reading his customary large pile of comics and pondering whether a cup of coffee, if left for a sufficient amount of time, could actually become sentient. On balance, he feels it probably could.

Mince pies courtesy of Verity Hayter. Thanks!

Speaking of top secrets, Jordan’s going on a top secret mission to Toronto next week, where he’ll be [Censored] and [Censored] with [Censored]. With Britain’s frankly rubbish winter meaning the prospects of seeing any snow are looking less and less likely, he’s looking forward to stomping about in the white stuff and touring as many Scott Pilgrim locations as possible before the flight back. He’s particularly looking forward to the flight in fact, as it’ll allow him ample time to hone his skills on Mario Kart 7, in order to humiliate Jes further during their lunchtime battles (in the interest of balance they drew two tournaments today and Jordan was owned on Balloon Battle mode yesterday). It’ll also do him a world of good to be away from Skyrim for a few days. Particularly as last night he was up till the wee hours rearranging his stash of items in his house into various chests and shelves. Oh dear.

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Random quote of the week: “I’ll stick a dog’s dick on the end.”

Whose (New) T-shirt? (last week’s answer: they were Dave G’s dinosaurs!)

Either Russell has a tiny head, or that's one big mug

Spirits are high in SFX Towers. We sent issue 218 down the internet pipes and to the printers earlier this week, but we’re chipper, mainly because every morning we can now wake up to a tasty chocolate treat in our advent calendars (except Dave G, who doesn’t like chocolate, the weirdo; and Russell, who only eats chocolate with an obscenely high cocoa percentage, because it’s “hardcore”) and in just a few day’s time we’re going for the office Christmas meal. Not just any old Christmas meal either – Christmas pie! 2011 might have been a tumultuous year, but we’re ending it on a high.

Otherwise it’s been a week characterised by work-related office absences. Dave G’s heading to London later today to interview Harry Potter’s ginger-wonders The Weasley Twins, Jordan was there on Friday for a first look at Sony’s new handheld the PS Vita, yesterday Dave B and Ade took a train to Prestatyn to make plans for the Weekender 3 and Comic Heroes editor Jes is nowhere to be seen. This may or may not be linked to the fact that he’s currently putting the hours into Mario Kart 7 ahead of his grudge match with Jordan. In fact, the only reason they email each other nowadays is to trash talk one another.

The Sinbad set in Malta. Looks dusty.

Nick’s been out of the office after a long weekend away too. On Saturday he grabbed his passport, hat and bullwhip (don’t ask) and absconded to Malta on a top secret mission – a trip to the set of Sky One’s brand new fantasy series Sinbad! We have to keep the details tightly under wrap upon threat of a visit from a sea serpent, but Nick got in the spirit of the middle-eastern adventurer by scaling a crumbling 17th century Maltese fort and skilfully avoiding death traps like a Welsh Prince Of Persia. Better than that (at least for the rest of team SFX) he brought back delicious Maltese chocolates. And no, before you ask, they weren’t Maltesers. Don’t blame us if you spot a food-related theme here, it’s almost lunch.

Nick’s not the only one who’s back from foreign climes – reviews ed Ian returned considerably browner of hue on Monday after spending two weeks in Florida, land of palm trees, rollerbladers and alligators. Judging by the tweets we saw, though, the thing that excited him the most about the whole trip was picking up a DVD of CHUD for only $5. Strange man.

We’ve got (almost) a full house today, though as the lovely chaps from 2000AD, Abaddon and Solaris are visiting SFX Towers. We’ll be checking out their Judge Dredd iOS game this afternoon. Then, erm, going to the pub.

Smegging trucks

Dave G’s taking a day off tomorrow and (foolishly?) he’s left Rob and Jordan in charge of posting his Friday regular Spurious Awards. Unfortunately seeing as Jordan’s done very little (read: nothing) for the past few days except play Skyrim till his eyes bleed he’s relying on random things he spots on the street, like Desiato Hotblack estate agents in London (the inspiration for the Hitchhiker’s character, apparently) or the delivery van you see on the left, found just round the corner from SFX Towers. He was also pleased to see Buffy’s Emma Caulfield tweeting a link to his latest Tweets Of The Week, and has made it his mission to get a full house of Whedon alumni linking to his regular Monday(ish) feature. Some say he’s delusional, we like to think of him as naively optimistic.

Working on the schedule for Weekender 3 is making Rich’s head hurt – but that’s only because there’s so much great stuff to get in there. He’s also moulding next month’s extremely exciting news section – with one potential story (with a heavy practical element) looking very, very exciting for the Deputy Editor.

Russell is relaxing a little before he starts work proper on the latest SFX Vampires Special. How does he relax? Well, last night he went home, ate pie and beans while watching Dick Whittington, synced his iPhone to add more Sex Pistols and Guns N’ Roses (yep, he still hasn’t shut up about his new phone), had a game of chess in the bath and then read Professor Richard Wiseman’s 59 Seconds. Curious lad.

Ade is feeling the effects of his nine-hour train ride to Pontins Prestatyn yesterday with Dave B for a Weekender site visit. Despite the lengthy train journey his enthusiasm hadn’t waned one jot when he turned up in the office this morning, “It’s going to be the best god damn party this side of the universe. OMG… It’s only eight weeks away! Eek!” And that was before the first coffee of the day.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Jennifer Lawrence versus pie? Pie wins.”

Whose Dinosaurs? (Last week’s answer: they were Rich’s scribbles!)

It’s been another patchy week in SFX Towers. Patchy in as much as there’s been big, gaping holes in team SFX, with the office reduced to a single writer, two designers, one prod editor and one workie by 4:30pm on Monday. Not that the rest of the team have been slacking off, of course with Rich in London interviewing an outspoken TV personality, Russell whiling away the hours on a super-secret project and Rob fighting the power and, er, standing in line for a passport.

All this travelling has meant most of the team have become hopelessly addicted to our new iDevice quiz app. Despite writing all the questions none of us have managed to get on the leaderboard yet. Jordan’s been stuck on just over 11,000 for weeks. Who are you mega-brains? We refuse to believe you’re actual humans and not cybernetic quiz automatons. It’s only 69p, why not give it a go and see if you can beat us. Or if you’re in the US, try here.

Can you believe it’s almost time for another shiny new issue of SFX? Subscribers should be getting their copies of Issue 216 any day now, but it officially goes on sale Wednesday 16 November and features three huge vampire exclusives on the latest seasons of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and Breaking Dawn Part One. [Don't forget Underworld 4! - Ed] Check back next week for a full rundown of the issue’s contents.

Ian will probably be midway over the Atlantic as you read this, as he heads off for two weeks in sunny Miami – we hope he doesn’t end up in Dexter’s kill-room. On Monday he travelled to the considerably colder climes of Wales to visit Honolulu Heights, interviewing Being Human’s new vampire Damien Molony, new regular Michael Socha, and returning guest star Craig Roberts. Highlight of the day? Well, it was the Being Human song Michael and Damien performed for him (a composition of their own creation), until Craig blew that out of the water by doing the David Brent dance.

Rich has finally gone hi-def at home, so he’s taking every opportunity possible to watch his new TV – that means Misfits, Fringe and The Fades mainly. This week he’s also been to London to speak to Charlie Brooker and his cast about their Twilight Zoney Black Mirror, building the news, and putting things in place for the Weekender.

SFX's new telephone operator. He's a bit prickly.

Dave B’s been travelling around the country with Ade this week, including top meetings and meals (see below). Today our editor-in-chief has been back in Bath but it’s still been a day of meetings, with big boss Clair in town too for lots of planning. Dave B, Dave G and Jordan have also been in the recording studio this afternoon, screen testing for an exciting future video project. Watch this space for more details in coming months.

Jordan was relieved when Celebrity Masterchef finished last month, as it meant Russell and Catherine wouldn’t be talking about it all the flipping time. But, oh no! Professional Masterchef is now on and they’re talking about THAT all the flipping time! He wants to go home…

….And play Skyrim. After blasting through Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception this weekend (his verdict: a wee bit disappointing) he’s cleared his gaming schedule for the next few weeks/months/years and is considering legally changing his name to Longbeard Dragonkiller, and only eating things he has captured in the wild.

Talking of food and Russell, he got to the end of his second Mission Burrito loyalty card this week (buy ten, get one free). That’s thanks to doing nights on his big secret SFX project, the exciting results of which you’ll see on November 23rd…

Ade is back at SFX Towers after a mini tour of Nottingham to see the boys at Black Library, which involved a few pints and a red hot curry. Then it was down to London to discuss some very exciting plans for the SFX Weekender 3 and to see Jo Fletcher to talk about her new book imprint.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I’ve got the cleanest backside in Future Publishing.”

Whose handwriting? (last week’s answer: it was Ian’s handwriting!)

Dave models the free breakfast supplies Sky sent him today. Er, thanks Sky.

It’s been a busy ol’ week in SFX towers. So much so that we don’t know where to start. SFX 216 went to press in a timely fashion, the SFX Sci-fi Quiz app went on sale on the App Store, Jordan’s doing more Christian Slater impressions (by interviewing vampires, not attempting an embarrassing New York drawl), Ian’s had his house invaded by the BBC and Nick was only in the second row for the press launch of Bond 23 – now officially named Skyfall. Phew! Anyone want to bring us some toasty slippers and a cup of tea?

First things first, SFX 216 went to press without a hitch – as good an excuse as any for the team to hit the pub for an evening of drink and merriment that went on far too long for a school night. Special 53 went to press too, early in fact, which we’re excited to reveal is dedicated to ghosts, ghouls and the paranormal! There must be something in the water. Special 53 will be on sale 23 November in time for a spooky Christmas and it comes with, amongst other things, a free 2012 calendar. Keep your eyes on SFX.co.uk for further details over the coming weeks.

Being trivia nuts, and the kind of people who spend far too much time on long, boring  train journeys, we play our fair share of quiz games. Unfortunately there aren’t enough apps out there with questions about interesting things that we like here at SFX (sci-fi and fantasy, in case you didn’t know), which is why we’ve gone and created  the SFX Sci-Fi Quiz app. Released earlier this week for iDevices, it costs a mere 69p (or 99c if you’re in the US) and has over 1000 questions, with three levels of difficulty. Those of us on the team who actually created it still struggle to get our names in the high score table, it’s that bastard hard. Respect to anyone who can even finish a round on “Invasive Probing”. Let us know your top scores and put us to shame. At 69p, you’d be mad not to.

Dave G is taking a couple of much-deserved days off. We forgot to ask him where he was going beforehand so we can only presume he’s spending time at an otter sanctuary, or visiting a Converse factory. He was in earlier this week though – namely on Halloween when he smeared his face with the red icing from this “lovely” heart-shaped cake  2K sent us to promote their upcoming game The Darkness II. We can only presume he was under the influence of a sugar high from all that icing and food dye.

Rich isn’t in the office either – he’s writing a feature in his kitchen. As good a place as any. Russell’s very excited because he’s off to see the great Professor Richard Dawkins in Bath tonight! He has one question about flossing teeth/the ability of organisms to adapt to change and one about the praying position/bowel relaxation. He’s not 100% confident that he will actually have the courage to ask them out loud though. Maybe at the signing session for The Magic Of Reality afterwards…

Most of the SFX team have been on set for TV and films so often that we’re starting to get a bit blasé about it, but it’s a different kettle of fish when the film crew come to you. Ian’s working from home today, but still managed to get caught up in a TV production this morning, after the Upstairs Downstairs production team set up outside his front door to shoot a short sequence. Now he knows why the neighbours spent two weeks having their house repainted; their gaff is doubling for the garage at the back of Eaton Place. Ian was proud to do his bit to help Auntie Beeb by letting the effects team plug in their smoke machine (don’t worry, this doesn’t mean Keeley Hawes catches on fire – it was just for “exhaust fumes”).

Rich's birthday package from our lovely reader Kell Harker. She knows him well.

Nick was in London today for the press launch for Bond 23. Despite being so excited that he regressed to the spiritual age of 10 for a few hours, he was a little disappointed Daniel Craig didn’t walk on stage in silhouette enclosed in a big white dot. You can read about exactly what he got up to in his Skyfall press launch report.

Journeys to London are a regular occurrence for the SFX team, but two in three days is a little more unusual. Jordan’s the unfortunate soul who’s had a date with First Great Western at a time in the morning no man was ever meant to see. It was all for a good cause though, as today he went to interview ILM’s Scott Farrar (an industry veteran who’s worked on some of the biggest films of the last 30 years, from Star Trek The Motion Picture to Transformers 3 via Return Of the Jedi and Jurassic Park) and on Tuesday he interviewed True Blood’s knockout vamp Jessica, aka Deborah Ann Woll. He hasn’t stopped smiling since and has vowed never to wash the shirt he was wearing when she hugged him ever again. In potentially related matters, we’ve started noticing an unpleasant pong around SFX Towers recently. Probably just a mouse trapped under the floorboards or something.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I might put my tongue in his beard hair and see what he had for breakfast.”

Whose Handwriting? (Last week’s answer: they were Rob’s scribbles!)

This happens less often than you'd think.

It’s the final week of issue 216, and you know what that means – late nights, lots of burritos and the odd case of cabin fever as Team SFX spend more time around each other than any group of human beings should reasonably have to.

For a reprieve from the madness Rich, Nick, Jordan and publishing industry legend^(TM) Steve Jarratt took a trip to the flicks last night for an early evening screening of Tintin (in 2D of course). The verdict? A resounding, “It’s OK” from Rich, Jordan and Steve, though Nick seemed a little more enamoured than the rest of us (especially with Snowy). Hard to fault its technical achievements, though. Speaking of Rich, he and Dave are in the process of final checking pages this week and have declared the new issue “looks good”. You heard it here first!

Rob’s nose is pouring out more snot than most species are capable of thanks to spending all day in the rain yesterday. It was well worth it though; not only did he get to live the high life on a Hollywood set (free cake! Explosions!) but he met a pair of A-listers, and achieved a childhood goal (gain entry to Pinewood Studios – check). Unfortunately he can’t divulge details at the moment, but it’ll be well worth it when he does, promise. He’s also gearing himself up for a night in the company of the mighty Wilco tonight, and with Misfits back on Sunday he’s feeling pretty good about life right now.

Dave G’s been spending the week wondering if anyone’s noticed the extra titbits he’s been putting up on the front page of the site, and mumbling something about Titanic football tables, that nobody understands. Might have something to do with the film he saw on Tuesday, but we can’t tell you what because that’s embargoed too.

Ever wondered what an average 30 seconds in the office was like? Now’s your chance! (Director Of Photography: Nick Setchfield using the Super 8 app on his iPad 2. And people say he’s trapped in the 70s…)

Mere mention of Misfits is enough to make Jordan’s ears prick, as all this week he’s been uploading interviews with every member of the cast to the site – still to come Iwan Rheon (Simon), Matthew McNulty (Seth) and a tidbit from Robert Sheehan, who he chatted with on Monday about his role in the BBC’s Christmas adaptation of The Borrowers. Jordan couldn’t resist the opportunity to put a few questions to the one-time Nathan about leaving the show now, could he? Aside from that Jordan’s week has consisted of Arkham City, more Arkham City and the occasional (reluctant) bathroom break. Since completing it on Saturday after a mammoth day’s gaming he’s been patrolling the streets of Gotham hovering up the remaining Riddler Trophies. He collected the final, 440th, trophy last night after spending almost an hour trying to figure out a puzzle (he never uses guides you see). “There are some sadists at Rocksteady” he could be heard muttering after. The question is, what’s he supposed to do between now and Uncharted 3?

Much of Ian’s week has been spent re-reading his hardback volumes of The Walking Dead and reading the tie-in novel Rise Of The Governor, whose cast of characters includes a bloke called Nick Parsons. It’s been a struggle not to think of Sale Of The Century…

The Walking Dead may have returned this week, but last night the first series of BBC Three’s superb The Fades came to a close. We gave it the full five-whack in our review, and it’s received a resounding thumbs up from the rest of the office. Even Jon who watched the final few minutes, but not the beginning. Er…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Mines a bit bigger, but deformed.”

Whose handwriting? (If you can make out more than one or two words we’ll be impressed. Last week’s answer – they were Russell’s Jeans!)

Yesterday team SFX sent not one, but two issues to press. Back slaps all round us! Issue 215 of good old SFX and issue 9 of Comic Heroes. It will come as no surprise then that most of the team descended on the pub just outside SFX Towers minutes after 5:30 for a long overdue evening of merriment and libations. It also doubled (tripled?) as a belated birthday celebration for Rich, as the team were in full on work mode for his actual birthday last week. Needless to say bleary eyes and black coffee are the order of the day around SFX Towers.

We’re also celebrating the fact that Alex Kingston confirmed this week that she’ll be attending the SFX Weekender 3 in February 2012, something which has momentarily distracted the team from the daunting prospect of the Weekender workload ahead of us. Less than four months to go. Eep! Tickets are still available, but going fast. Book now by calling 08700 11 00 34, or head to www.sfxweekender.com/tickets for more information.

Russell has been immersed in a top secret work project that’s keeping him from his home (more news next month!). But when he does get home he’s been cursed with a neighbourhood cat he let in the house that won’t leave! “It got to midnight and I still couldn’t get rid of him!” he moaned. “Eventually I had to get really angry with him to force him out. It was very stressful.” Incredible news. Expect to read all about it in next week’s Bath Chronicle.

Rich is also doing some top secret work – interviewing a TV personality who’s due to call any minute. He’s not as hungover as he thought he’d be. Obviously we didn’t put enough free birthday drinks in front of him. He’s also looking forward to Wales taking on Ireland in the Rugby World Cup quarter finals on Saturday morning. If only it didn’t kick off at 6am…

Ade's cat Dennis has a new friend! Maybe he should have named him CAT-AT? (sorry)

Fresh from his appearance on BBC4, Dave G spent his weekend at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival. Before you think it, no, he wasn’t stalking the little uns, he was there to chair two talks by young adult authors John Connolly, Will Hill, KJ Wignall, William Hussey. He was uncharacteristically nervous about it all on Friday afternoon, a state of mind easily fixed by some liquid Dutch courage. He met top author Charlie Higson at the event too, who told him how much he loved the zombie special. Fun fact: Higson has one of the zombie keytoppers given away free with the special on one of his keys, a ringing endorsement if ever we heard one! It’s on sale now, but if online shopping is your thing you can buy a copy here. Speaking of online shopping, did you know you can also buy our amazing Star Wars DVD Guide at the Amazone ebook store? Well you do now.

Dave B is going to be watching and reviewing Saturday’s Merlin later. He’ll be doing it in the daylight since last Saturday’s was so scary. Dave B also went with Ian to see a talk by comedy writing legends Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (Hancock’s Half Hour/Steptoe And Son) at the weekend. Afterwards, he made an exciting discovery on the IMDB. In 1974, the duo wrote a half-hour piece for the Beeb’s Comedy Playhouse series (a testing ground where sitcoms such as Til Death Do Us Part and Are You Being Served began) called The Last Man On Earth. Featuring Dandi Nichols (aka Alf Garnett’s wife) it sees a mother and son returning from a caravan holiday to discover that everyone in the world has disappeared. Yes, it’s SFX material! Why isn’t this on DVD (it does exist)? If you’re listening, Network DVD…

Nick is looking forward to meeting a movie-making icon next week (but gutted he’ll have to skip the next Couch Potato to do so), while Jordan is getting very excited about Zelda: Skyward Sword after chatting to a chum who has reviewed it for SFX sister mag Edge. He’s also still hopelessly obsessed with Fallout 3. We’ll only start to getting worried when he begins making moral decisions based on the amount of karma he’ll get though.

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Random Discussions Of The Week: A 30 minute “debate” about the Doctor Who season six finale, is Blade a superhero movie? And why is it so hot?

Random Quote Of The Week: “There is a bizarre parallel between BBC breakfast and Harrison ford films.”

Whose Glasses? (last week’s answer: they were Rob’s Batman kicks!)

This week in the work experience hot seat: Helen Wilson

Holiday season may be over for the kids, but it’s kicked right in again here at SFX Towers, which may as well be renamed Tumbleweed Towers (which certainly has a nice alliteration vibe going on). Rich is off in Canada, Kirky is roadtripping around the West Coast of the States, Jordan’s having a staycation and Rob is finally getting the chance to really enjoy his new home. Probably by gardening.

So no, we’re nowhere near deadline, as you may have worked out.

But we just can’t stop these guys working. Even though they’re supposed to be off work, on Monday Rob still attended the press launch for The Fades (which he enjoyed immensely and may have scared him just a little but, but he wouldn’t admit that). He was supposed to come back with lots of video interviews in arms… but there was a bit of a technical hitch, as you’ll see from the video clip of Tom Ellis.

Jordan can’t seem to shake the work ethic, either. He’s been sending in features for Nick and still making sure that Tweets Of The Week goes live. We also know from his very active Twitter feed at the weekend that his Star Wars The Complete Saga Blu-ray box-set must have arrived.

Dave B is not on holiday yet, but it’s only a matter of hours. He’s preparing for a well-earned break that starts tomorrow as well, which will be especially welcome after the week of wall-to-wall meetings he’s had. He was also seen smashing an SD card with a very large hammer, after being told by the IT department that the reason our Flip Cam kept breaking down was because the card was a fake – not a top quality specimen we thought we’d bought at all, but cheap’n’cheerful knock-off with a counterfeit sticker. We’ve been had!

Dave G was another member of the team impressed with The Fades, but he didn’t see it at the swanky press launch. He had to make do with the BBC’s pixel-o-vision preview service, but still loved it, afterwards mumbling something about “that was great – would be even better if only they could find a way to bump off the comedy sidekick geek”. When somebody asked if his problem with the character was because he reminded him of himself, he left the office grumbling, “I’m no frakking geek.”

The latest in our merry-go-round of work experiencers is Helen Wilson, who drew the short straw and came here on a week when a) she didn’t get to meet half the team, and b) because we’re so short-staffed has spent most of the time transcribing everybody else’s interviews. But she’s very quick, so we’re not complaining. She also helped us out with our first ever “Unboxing” video. Well, when you have an item as enticing as the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Board Game delivered, you may as well make the opening an occasion. And well impressed we were too (“Wooden playing pieces!” cooed Adrian, “Not yer usual plastic tat!”) though it still seems odd that the makers didn’t go down the obvious route of making the board disc-shaped.

Nick would like to point out that he was behind the camera for this, but by the way he’s banging on about “fluid camerawork”, “smooth, Steadicam-style movement” and “judicious use of whip-pans” you’d think he’d just directed Jaws.

After finally putting his foot on the throat of Zombies: The Ultimate Guide, Ian is back concentrating on the reviews section, and feeling just a little bit swamped. Y’see, thanks to Halloween and Christmas looming October’s the busiest month of the year for DVD releases; there are over 60 titles we could be reviewing, and only 20-odd review slots to go around. He also made the mistake of counting how many books he received over the last month, and tallied it up to 94. So if you’re wondering why the self-published book you sent in didn’t get reviewed, that’ll be why…

And if a) you’ve been reading From The SFX Office for a while, and b) you heard the news about new Kate Bush album coming out, you can guess for yourself how Nick’s been this week.

Apart from filling up the next exciting issue of SFX with ads, Ade is locked in secret SFX Weekender talks right now! Ohhhhhhh if only you guys could be a fly on the wall… Eeeeek!

Last but not least, John has been designing the cover for SFX#215, which involves some images taken at an exclusive-to-SFX photoshoot – but he’s not allowed to say who or what yet.

Random quote of the week: “There’s a bizarre parallel between BBC Breakfast and Harrison Ford films.”

Whose T-shirt? (Last week’s answer: it was Nick Setchfield’s very subtle Raiders Of The Lost Ark T-shirt)

Click on the image if you feel the desperate need to see the very mildly NSFW version…

Being Human greetings cards - winging their way to our competition winners later today.

If the SFX Office were a walkin’, talkin’ sentient being there’s no doubt it would be laid up in bed with officially the World’s Worst Hangover right now. The reason? Yesterday we sent issue 214 to the printers. Huzzah! As you can imagine then it’s mostly been a case of heads down, fingers on fire this week as the team created word magic for your monthly(ish) consumption.

“Mostly” because we’ve also been working hard signing up guests for the SFX Weekender. In the past seven days alone we’ve confirmed that the lovely Eve Myles, Sylvester McCoy, Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Mark Buckingham, Tony Lee, Dan Boultwood, the guys from 2000AD and more (phew!) will be attending. This very morning in fact the SFX team relocated approximately 10 feet west to the swanky meeting room next to our desks and brainstormed panel ideas. Five months to go and already there’s not a finger nail left in the office.

Rich has been catching up on The Walking Dead this week – one episode to go, and he likes it without loving it (though he’s not really a zombie person). Otherwise, he’s working through a massive to do list before he goes on holiday, getting sucked into lengthy debates about this year’s Hot 50, and trying to work out if he’s looking forward to tonight’s Torchwood episode or not. There’s potential, but it’s running out of time to find it.

Imagine what it's like on the inside...

Jordan on the other hand loves everything about the rotting, braindead ghouls. No, not the X-Factor contestants, zombies. So much so in fact he spent the best part of his weekend writing reviews for Ian’s imminent zombie special. But that wasn’t half as exciting as his Monday when he hopped on a train down to the big city to visit Batman: Arkham City developers Rocksteady Studios. He’s sworn to secrecy on pain of a batarang to the head till next week, but here’s a sneaky peek at Rocksteady’s rather excellent front entrance, with a guest appearance from Studio Director Jamie Walker.

Roughly ten minutes after sending the last page of issue 214 Russell bid adieu to the SFX office for a whole two weeks and jetted off on holiday to the East. The team are already missing his peculiar fruit eating habits and Tyneside idioms; though we can’t say we’re sad to see the back of his soggy swimshorts, which he’s taken to airing on the back of a spare chair after his lunchtime swim. Before skipping the country for a bit Russell was able to catch a preview of this Saturday’s Doctor Who, “The Girl Who Waited” which has done the rounds in the office to near unanimous thumbs up. You’ll have to wait till Saturday for the full verdict, but take our advice, you’ll want to watch this one on the biggest, nicest TV possible.

Rob and Comic Heroes editor Jes are chuffed after picking up several of DC’s 52 re-launch titles in Bath’s local comic store, including Superman #1, and discovering they’re actually quite good. Rob’s double plus chuffed in fact after a breakout appearance on Bristol Community Radio this weekend to talk about his one-man-band Rob And The Rules. Listen here and sing your praises below.

Who said geeks weren't fashionable?

It’s Ian’s final day of frantic labours on SFX’s next special issue, Zombies: The Ultimate Guide, after which he plans to collapse into a nice, relaxing coma. We have two images to share from you relating to this. Firstly, the cover of the wallet in which all the zombie-related goodness comes packaged. Secondly: we’ve got a new, exclusive SFX t-shirt design to unveil! Featuring a useful reminder of how to deal with the undead in the style of a war-time propaganda poster, it’s the work of artist Matt Talbot (check out his portfolio here). This art also features on the double-sided poster which will come free with the special when it’s released on 26 September. In the meantime, you can pre-order your SFX zombie t-shirt (price £14.99, and available in sizes from S to XXL) now by clicking on this here link.

Speaking of the undead Ade had a meeting this week entitled “zombies”. Well, you don’t get one every day. Unless you work in the SFX office of course.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Oh no, it sounds like Highway To Heaven!”

Whose T-shirt? (Last week’s answer: it was Dave G’s mug (as in coffee mug, not his face)!)

The SFX team give you a special preview of tonight’s episode of Torchwood

Pinch, punch… no, nothing to do with it being the first of the month. Pinching ourselves is what all the men have been doing in the office since the we heard the news that Eve Myles was coming to the next Weekender. And then punching the air when we realise it isn’t all a dream. Various members of the team have had the luck to interview her over the years, and believe us, she’s indescribably adorable and even more lovely in the flesh than on TV. Oddly Kirky hasn’t been reacting the same way to hearing that Sylvester McCoy’s coming – he’s probably a little old to be her dream man. But all the old-time Who fans on the team are suitably excited – although plans to see if he can break his own ferrets-down-trousers record live on stage might not get very far.

Which is all distracting us from the job in hand of getting SFX 214 out of the door. The printers are expecting it tomorrow. They may be lucky, if the copious caffeine injections work. And once again, it’s been a busy week as far as out-of-office activities have been going, with SFX hacks chasing about the country, cameras and dictaphones in hand, hunting down sci-fi and fantasy quarry. Jordan is currently in London doing an impression of Christian Slater – he’s interviewing a vampire… not a real one, but an actor who plays one of the most recognisable bloodsuckers on TV at the moment.

Rob achieved two life goals in one morning on Tuesday, when he met the mighty McLovin’ (that’s Christopher Mintz Plasse to his mum) and a current crew member of the Enterprise, baby-faced genius Chekov (Anton Yelchin). Yep, he was at the Fright Night junket. It would have been an even better morning if David Tennant had turned up as he was supposed to (he’d lost his voice, according to news reports), but you can’t win ’em all…

In other news, Rob’s been wondering what the hell happened to his secret stash of Hobnobs, Rich has come back from a brief break with Gallic lurgy, and Russell, Jon and Catherine have discovered the joys of Mission Burrito, freshly open in Bath (and they’re so stuffed they’re off the suspect list when it comes to Hobnobbling). Russell is wondering if he can arrange some burrito product placement in the next Couch Potato in exchange for free nosh.

Anyone feel the urge to light the blue touch paper? Well, they are bangers..

Ade is also unlikely to have swiped the biscuits, as readers have been sending him food. This week he was surprised to receive two 12-inch salamis in the post (courtesy of Chris Montoya) and can now be seen wandering about the office boasting about his big package.

Due to the demands of trying to satisfy both a) a voracious art editor on Zombies: The Ultimate Guide (our next special issue) and b) a vociferous production editor on your regular SFX, Ian has spent every night this week working until 3 or 4am, and has now reached that stage of exhaustion where you start seeing non-existent cats in your peripheral vision. It’s all worth it, though – with one week of production to go, the Zombie Special (out on 26 September, flesheating-ghouls fans!) is looking great! If you’re a subscriber to undead newsletter The Zombie Times you’ll be getting a full preview of the contents when the latest instalment hits your inbox this week, since we’ve given them the exclusive. To subscribe, go to: http://www.terror4fun.com/zombie_mailing_list.html.

Dave B is desperately encouraging people to follow us on our Facebook so that we can break yet another momentous barrier (8,000 followers) and reckons that we’ll be 9,000 in no time the way he’s going. He’s also been working with Jon on the cover of the next issue of SFX (shh! Still top secret at this stage!) and beavering away on SFX’s upcoming iPhone app, a brilliant sci-fi trivia quiz. You’ll be able to download and play it within the next few weeks. Jon has also been drawing pictures of ghosts (why? Again, top secret!) while Dave B is knackered, having joined the gym at last – although the new burrito shop is putting pay to all that good work.

Meanwhile, Nick came back from a Welsh break, slightly unnerved at discovering a spinning Hulk in Porthcawl.

And Dave G has been seen wiping biscuit crumbs out of his stubble.

Random Quote Of The Week: “It’s like Big Brother with dwarves.”

Whose mug? (last week’s answer – they were Rich’s glasses!)

Catherine And The Cyberman, another of the lost episodes

If you’ve been reading FROM THE SFX OFFICE for the past 63 gripping installments (eep!) you’ll know that we work hard at SFX Towers. Bloomin’ hard. So hard in fact that even with a team of 10 and a legion of freelancers, producing 138 pages of gooey sci-fi goodness every month, long hours are the norm. But we’d be mad to complain because short of “chocolate taster” or “Jedi Knight”, working for SFX is just about the best job in the galaxy.

Take today – while Dave G is writing about his Merlin set visit (featuring the Greatest Headline Of All Time), Ian is simultaneously editing a zombie special and SFX’s reviews section, Catherine’s been grabbing images from Angel for an upcoming feature, Dave B and Jon have been in the photo studio to take Dave’s latest Ed Zone picture, Rich has been re-watching “Let’s Kill Hitler” for his review, Jordan’s been, er, writing FROM THE OFFICE and Rob’s been constructing Halo ersatz-Lego. And today’s a slow day.

Yesterday was much more exciting (for us at least) because we finally took delivery of Comic Heroes 8 (out Friday) and SFX 213 – after what feel like ages since subscribers got their hands on their copies. Like what you see? Then be sure to join in the debate over on the forum. Or buy a copy for your Gran, we guarantee* she’ll love it. Oh, and there was a Cyberman wandering round the office on Tuesday. Random.

Ian is running around like a blue-arsed fly at the moment simultaneously trying to whip the reviews section into shape and organise a thousand details for our upcoming Ultimate Guide To Zombies special – which is shaping up pretty nicely. The cover is on draft four, the free poster art is in progress, and seven features are fitted and proofed. Now all he needs to do over the Bank Holiday weekend is get round to writing up those four features. Yikes!

Russell’s chuffed because he got FOUR goals in last Monday’s Future Publishing Cup semi-final. Next up: the final (another one). He just hopes his legs don’t go and the rest of him survives deadline week. Dave G is back in the office today after a trip to the Doctor Who Experience in the capital yesterday where he saw a Silurian made up before his eyes. Rob meanwhile, Mr-happy-go-lucky first thing with the prospect of a morning playing with toys for the collectables spread ahead of him, is still in recovery after spending nearly two hours constructing Halo Lego Bloks. It took so long in fact that our flip cam ran out of space before the end:

Music: Kevin MacLeod

Rich has been the talk of Twitter after his appearance on BBC 4’s rock hard quiz show Only Connect. We won’t spoil the result, but if you like to see posh kids beaten into submission you can catch it on the iPlayer. He’s also been writing his review of “Let’s Kill Hitler” for SFX.co.uk (he says, “It’s excellent! And you won’t believe it when XXX does XXX to XXX.”), processing news pages and getting set for a long weekend in France. Tres bien!

Jordan’s been enjoying his evening’s watching old Who, and getting increasingly excited about Star Wars on Blu-ray. He’s also started playing Alan Wake after borrowing an Xbox from regular SFX scribe Matt Pellett and has taken to bringing a flashlight (and spare batteries) to bed with him. Creeeepy. Ade is still laughing at the thought of returning from lunch this week to find a Cyberman sat at his desk trying to dial out – genius!

*Not an actual guarantee

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Oh, sod off tomatoes.”

Whose Glasses? (last week’s answer – they were Dave G’s awesome Riddler kicks!)

Comic Heroes 8 really is super.

This regular Thursday blog comes with the snazzy title FROM THE SFX OFFICE, but this week it might have been more appropriate to rename it FROM OUTSIDE THE SFX OFFICE. The reason?  With half the team on holiday and the other half in and out of the office for a plethora of interviews and set visits all week, SFX towers has been a ghost town in comparison to the usual thriving hub of geekery.

With the exception of art ed Jon, who’s still taking some much-deserved R&R, today is the first time we’ve had the team at full strength in what feels like weeks. Not only that but we’ve got reinforcements in the form of ever-so-helpful workies: Rebecca Adam and Charlett Upham. As well as tea duties (only kidding, we haven’t forced them to make a single cuppa. Yet…) they’ve mostly been helping Jordan plough through his intimidating number of interviews and enormous list of fiendishly difficult unanswered questions submitted to SFXperts over that past few months.

Last week we told you about some of Jordan’s on set antics with the Misfits, well this week it was Dave B and Catherine’s turn to visit the eerie Runnymede set to take some snaps of the gang for an upcoming feature. Speaking of Misfits, Nick is slowly making his way through season two (he watches it in semi-real-time you see – one episode per week) and has just got the last episode left; while Jordan is re-watching the lot on Blu-ray ahead of writing his set report. Although he’s been enjoying it just as much as the first time round, he’s spent the whole time praying E4 launch an Freeview HD channel before season three starts airing. Best-looking show in sci-fi, hands down. He’s also been laughing heartily at this work of genius courtesy of regular SFX scribe Will Salmon (@evilrobotbill on twitter, which was born after a drunken pub discussion last week.

Rich just finished a review of Firefly on Blu-ray (surprisingly similar to Firefly on DVD), and is staring longingly at the Christopher Lambert movie that’ll be taking centre stage in Couch Potato later today. In a peerless filmography, this is a standout. That’s right, in mere hours the couch crew (including no less than three workies) will be descending on Rich’s pad for another late afternoon/early evening of film fun. It’s not all feet up in front of the telly though, the hidden cost of couch is that one person must furiously dictate the barrage of quips flying back and forth across the room. The biscuits make up for it though.

Rebecca Adam and Charlett Upham have successfully survived work experience... so far.

Ian spent three days in North Wales this week, some of it spent visiting Portmeirion, home of The Prisoner. Yes, he did get his photo taken running down the beach shouting, “I am not a number, I am free man!” – well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? Sadly, his efforts to convince his other half to visit “this rock The Master briefly stood next to when they were filming ‘The Five Doctors’” came to nothing.

After his trip to Egham on Tuesday Dave B headed back to the Big Smoke yesterday for a day of meetings, including a trendy media lunch with the Group Publisher, and a chat about authors at the Weekender with the publicist from Orbit books. Dave G on the other hand headed west to visit Merlin’s new green screen set in Cardiff where he had a fun-filled day, but still hasn’t quite recovered from seeing Nathaniel Parker strip down to his underwear in front of him. You can read more about his day in a future issue of SFX, but for now be sure to check out this brief snippet with Katy McGrath and a picture of three burly blokes. As if that weren’t enough Dave G, henceforth know as the hardest working man in magazines has been interviewing Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill (twice), saw Real Steel and interviewed the director Shawn Levy and chatted with the team behind the new Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy app. Sterling effort.

The Knights who say Ni?

Rob has returned from the dead after spending most of the week curled up in his bed in the foetal position after his body gave up on him, while Nick was disappointed by the utter lack of balloon’s at the Bristol Balloon Festival on Sunday. Mother Nature can be cruel sometimes. Ade on the other hand has been off for the past week and returned to find more foreign sweeties from readers’ holidays, though his search for a golden Twinkie goes on.

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Random (Drunken Pub) Quote Of The Week: “I don’t want a haunted arsehole.”

Whose Shoes? (last week’s answer: they were Rob’s specs!)

Argh! Friendly zombies

SFX Towers may be down in numbers this week with Russell, Jon and Nick all away on post-deadline breaks, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be celebrating by consuming copious quantities of booze in the local dolly tub this evening. Or, if any of the higher ups are reading, sensible levels of alcoholic beverages to keep us in high spirits while ensuring we’re in tip top shape for work tomorrow. Phew! Think we covered our tracks.

That’s right, SFX 212 has barely been on shelves for a fortnight but 213 is already in the bag and we’re well underway on 214. Confusing, huh? It’s enough to put you off numbers forever. Not Dave Golder, however, who is more than a little obsessed with stats and graphs. So imagine his delight when he was given a whole new analytical toolkit to play with for SFX.co.uk’s new video system. In fact the only thing that makes him happier is the mention of Sean Bean – but that’s a story for another day.

Speaking of Dave G he’s in London today for a screening of fighting robots flick Real Steel and an interview with the invincible Rory, aka Arthur Darvill – riding the rough with the smooth. Dave B meanwhile is man who’s never off deadline. Being the editor-in-chief of SFX’s whole portfolio means if it isn’t the monthly mag it’s the latest special, or Comic Heroes, or the website, or…. Oh, you get the idea.

Our new workie Jen Neal is in surprisingly high spirits after a week in this madhouse

Rich just taken advantage of 213 going to the printers with a couple of nights at the cinema: Captain America (liked it, particularly the retro stylings, but not as in love with it as some of the team) and Bridesmaids (not SFX territory, but highly recommended). Otherwise it’s a day of going through fresh and shiny news copy, intensive emailing and writing reviews.

There may be chaos on the streets, but it seems Jordan couldn’t keep away from London this week, the young tyke rocking on down to the big smoke last Thursday for some one on one time with True Blood’s Joe Manganiello (he plays werewolf Alcide) and new Batman game Arkham City. It was a larger than life day with Mangianello closer to a tree trunk in size than the average homo sapien and the Arkham City demo taking place on an enormous cinema screen – something he’s always dreamed of doing (playing a game on a cinema screen that is, not meeting a giant). From there he spent the weekend oop North, returning to his roots, before rushing home to Bath in the wee hours of Monday evening only to be glued to the start of the apocalypse on rolling news till 2am. Barely five hours later and he was on a train to London yet again to visit the set of Misfits series three. He’s been sworn to secrecy on pain of lacto-kinetic torture, but would like to reassure anyone concerned the show won’t be as good without Robert Sheehan that there’s nothing to worry about – Joe Gilgun/Rudy is AMAZE-O-TRON. Yep, he’s that good we had to make up a  gibberish word to describe him.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I like my SFX crunchy.”

Whose Glasses?: (last week’s answer: it was Ian’s t shirt!)

There was an alignment as rare as a triple eclipse in the office this week. No, we haven’t started up a synchronised swimming team. For the first day in yonks every member of team SFX (including publisher Clair) could be found in SFX Towers. Oh, hang on, Adrian was off sick. Almost every member of team SFX could be found in SFX Towers. As good a reason as any to celebrate, we’re sure you’ll agree, so tonight the team are heading down to the pub (conveniently located mere feet away from our front door) for a payday night on the town. If SFX.co.uk is a bit quiet tomorrow, now you know why.

That’s not all we have to celebrate. This week SFX issue 212 and our Top 100 Icons special both went on sale in fine retail establishments across the land, and the odd outlet in cyberspace. And there’s more because this week saw the return of Ian (remember him?) from his three-month sabbatical – you can read about that later – and our intrepid Comic-Con travellers Dave B, Rich and Ade.

You could smuggle human beings in one of these things.

Aside from regaling us with tales of close encounters with Eliza Dushku and bonkers foreign journalists at the Walking Dead breakfast, sleep (or a lack there of) has been top of the agenda. Dave B is horribly jetlagged, having been up until 3am unable to sleep. Still, at least he got some Comic-Con transcription done. He is, of course, completely ready for bed right about now so you can fully expect to see him sleeping underneath his desk later. Rich too, is coming to terms with being back in the UK, and getting ready to transcribe like crazy – his penance for going to Comic-Con.

Dave and Rich also returned with tons of Comic-Con swag and lovely American chocolate, which you can win! (not the chocolate, we already scoffed that). There’s two of the show’s enormous swag bags (one a limited edition Real Steel bag), Walking Dead/Star Wars transfers, a Falling Skies pin badge, a commemorative magazine and more! To win, simply identify the mystery owner of today’s “Whose T shirt?” in the comments section below and we’ll pick a winner using the tried and tested point-a-finger-at-the-screen-with-your-eyes-closed method.

The Doctor's new companion?

Our reviews editor Ian is finally back in the office after a three-month sabbatical, which he spent mooching around at home “just chilling out and, y’know, doing stuff”.  At least, we think it’s Ian. It certainly looks like him, but Ian doesn’t normally exude an air of Zen calm – and he didn’t have reading specs before either. Maybe it’s some sort of short-sighted clone. We’re into the fourth day now and we still haven’t heard him scream “MOTHERF***KERS!!!” at the top of his lungs, or Hulk smash his PC. How long will this period of serenity last? The smart money is on about a week and a half…

Jordan finally overcame his intense hatred of RPGs and started playing Mass Effect this last week. He’s already blitzed his way through the first game and is now a full 16 hours into the second. Social life, who needs one? His decision to start playing was in no way spurred on by the fact you can sleep with Yvonne Strathovski in the game. Honest.

Today is Ade’s first day back in the office after a week away in San Diego. He’s still jetlagged, but what the hell because he’s still beaming from meeting Daniel Craig, and Matt Smith (see above).

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Random Quote Of The Week: “In the real world, werewolves would all wear slip-ons or flip-flops.”

Whose t shirt? (last week’s answer: it was Dave Golder’s t shirt!)

Shiny.

Greetings loyal readers to another exciting instalment of FROM THE OFFICE! So, how d’ya like our new threads?

That’s right after a few technical gremlins caused a slight delay, SFX.co.uk has been given a makeover. “Again?” We hear you cry. Well, believe it or not it’s been well over a year since our last full redesign, and this is more of an upgrade than a complete overhaul with the site migrating to a faster server and dozens of smaller changes to make navigating the site more user-friendly. In fact, you lot are to blame because the site has proven so popular over the last 12 months that a week wouldn’t go by without the site slowing to a crawl or crashing Future’s servers altogether (usually caused by an unexpected @neilhimself or @simonpegg tweet). It’s faster, easier on the eye and still your first stop for sci-fi on the web. At least that’s the plan…

It’s not all there quite yet – greater Facebook integration, for example, is still to come next week. But if the website’s not enough to satisfy your hunger for sci-fi then you’re in luck because next week we’ve got not one, but two brand news issues for your consumpiton – issue 212 of SFX (on sale Wednesday 27 July) and special number 51 (on sale Tuesday 26 July), which is dedicated to the top 100 science fiction icons of the 21st Century. You might be surprised to find who comes out on top…

As if there wasn’t enough going on in the office this week, Dave B, Rich and Adrian jetted off to San Diego Tuesday morning for Geekpalooza 2011, aka Comic-Con. They’re blogging every day over here with the biggest news from the show floor, but for minute to minute updates be sure to keep an eye on our Twitter feed.

Back in miserable old Blighty, Jordan, Russell, Jon and Catherine decided to make the best of the horrible weather and enjoy an afternoon of Couch Potato funtimes round Russell’s pad. We can’t reveal the subject of issue 213’s Couch just yet, but we can confirm that Russell still owns a ludicrous amount of cereal.

Rob's collected Turf - the first signed by Wossy. Nice.

Speaking of Russell, he bit his tongue and started watching Sherlock this week. He likes what he’s seen so far but can’t help but feel some – possibly irrational – anger towards it because it’s one of the reasons we’re on a Doctor Who starvation diet over the next two years…

Jordan on the other hand has been spending far too long this week obsessing over the Dark Knight Rises trailer. He’s not quite sure which Bat-property he’s looking forward to most now – Arkham City or Christopher Nolan’s trilogy capper. He found himself less enamoured by the Amazing Spider-Man trailer, however, particularly as the trailer’s one innovation (first-person city-scaling) seemed to be lifted from Mirror’s Edge – a game he played (and loved) only the other month. Seems it’s a week for irrational prejudice round these parts.

Rob has spent a significant chunk of his week transcribing his interview with Jonathan Ross from last Friday – check out the next issue of Comic Heroes for the full lowdown on Wossy’s burgeoning comics career. He plans on spending the next few days attempting to find space for his comic collection in his lovely new house, watching Attack The Block and trying not to think about Captain America: The First Avenger.

By the way, if you’re wondering whether Cap’s any good our Nick’s seen it and, in short, he loved it – read what he thought over here.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I’d unbuckle that belt.”

Whose t shirt? (last week’s answer: it was Rob’s t shirt!)

We think Jordan's a little too excited about HP7.

Has it already been a week since we last spoke? Boy, how time flies when you’re having fun, or in our case putting in the hours for deadline week. Not that we can’t make our own fun in an office full of Captain America pop-up frisbees and enough sci-fi merchandise to fill your average Toys ’R Us.

Only this Monday, much to Jordan’s excitement, the latest line-up of Transformers arrived in the office. Swanky box aside though, it was a crushing disappointment for the child of the ’80s action figures after it took him an astonishing/embarrassing 16 minutes (with the instructions) to transform Optimus from battle bot to truck. Either kids are a lot smarter these days or Hasbro are training the next generation of brain surgeons. In other news Jordan is off to London to see Harold Potter And The Extremely Long Title: Part 2 tomorrow (eek!) and spent the best part of his weekend catching up on DLC now that his internets have finally been switched on – finally getting round to discovering the rather brilliant Braid. The 3DS E-store has also been eating into his every spare minute: Tennis! Alleyway! Kirby’s Dream Land! Ah, sweet nostalgia…

Between houses and relying on the charity of his co-workers, this week Rob has had the pleasure of staying at both Russell and Dave’s swish pads. At the weekend, he gets to move into his own new place, but until then remains pathetically grateful to his wonderful colleagues for putting up with his bizarre morning rituals. In other news, he took a tour round Television Centre as part of a press day for new BBC Three show The Fades, saw David Tennant drop the f-bomb with aplomb in Fright Night, and is approaching the half way mark of A Feast For Crows. Roll on July 12th and A Dance With Dragons…

Hands off! It's ours.

Dave G is in recovery after actually enjoying an episode of Teen Wolf last night (episode six for those wondering). Jordan’s not convinced and hasn’t got past the first 10 minutes of episode one yet. Rich meanwhile popped along to Bath’s second finest cinema last night (no names) for a late screening of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon and came out disliking Optimus, of all things. “He’s too boring and preachy,” Rich declared. Of all the crimes against Transformers in those films, surely that is the greatest. He, Dave B and Ade are also planning their Comic Con down to the finest detail as we speak, be sure to check back on the site in two weeks for the latest news from the show floor.

It’s been a triumphant week for Russell after scoring two in the big game on Monday and placing 3rd (out of 26) in the Brain of Bath general knowledge quiz last Thursday (along with team mates Dave G and Rich). He’s been celebrating by, er, subbing pages till all hours.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I don’t want your filler questions.”

Whose Pockets? (Last week’s answer: it was Jordan’s mug! He has a lot of mugs)

Thwop! “What’s that noise?” We hear you cry. Well, if you’ve picked up the latest issue of SFX you’ll know there’s only one thing it could be – the satisfying sound which accompanies the sudden pop of our latest freebie. For those not in the know, issue 212 of SFX comes with a 100% free and 110% awesome Captain America pop up frisbee. The office has rarely been so hazardous. We’ve also been hearing that a few of you are having difficulties fitting Cap’s shield back in its pouch. SFX instruction bot, activate! (warning: those with a low tolerance for extended crotch shots, avert your eyes from the video above).

Wonder if we could sneak this past Tharg.

Throwing shields is all well and good, but according to the survey we’ve been conducting on the SFX site over the past week, you lot are more interested in taking to the skies than taking out co-workers with a metal disc. Can’t say we’re surprised.

Nick spent the weekend at the University of Chichester, mixing it with diabolical masterminds and catsuit-clad lovelies at The Avengers 50th Anniversary Celebration. He was particularly thrilled to finally meet an Avengers girl in the form of Linda Thorson, alias the iconic Tara King, and even more delighted to discover that she knew SFX. He now has a vision of Steed and Tara attempting Blastermind while quaffing glasses of vintage champers. He returned to the office to find an alluringly mysterious package, which turned out to be a telescope, of all things. An astronomically-flavoured promo item for Falling Skies, apparently – we just knew The Sky At Night didn’t have that kind of publicity budget…

Look who we found in the pub! It's author Jonathan Green.

On Monday, Jordan zipped down to London on First Great Western’s finest (note: not actually that fine) for a screening of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon and was greeted by the sweltering inner-city heat. You can read his thoughts on Michael Bay’s latest opus here, but the question that’s been plaguing him since his latest trip to Leicester Square has had little to do with giant robots or how exactly Rosie Huntington-Whiteley got a role in a billion dollar franchise (oh, right), but how have they managed to fill four floors of M&M World with M&M merchandise? The mind boggles.

Rob and Dave B went to Oxford to meet folk from 2000AD, Solaris and Abaddon earlier this week. They had a tour of the office where they saw the mighty Tharg overlooking the production of 2000 AD and heard the latest on Judge Dredd movie Dredd, before retreating to the pub. Rich meanwhile is sorting out stuff for San Diego Comic-Con, writing a news story about The Matrix Live for the website, and looking forward to doing this month’s Afterlife interview this afternoon…

Ade is still very amused at the Tardis Waste Disposal Lorry he spotted earlier this week. Is this a secret government team trained to dispose of Alien goo or something?

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Random quote of the week: “There’s a lot of crap in that show, but she floats to the top.”

Whose Mug? (last week’s answer: they were Rich’s kicks!)

One of the best things about working on a monthly magazine is that outside deadline week we’re free to put our feet up with a fresh cuppa and indulge in long afternoon chats about all things geek. Only kidding! The work never stops in SFX towers (except when we go home, obvs), but the rewards are off the scale amaze-o.

Particularly next week which, in a rare convergence of new issue joy, sees issue 211 of SFX and issue seven of Comic Heroes on shelves on the same day (Wednesday 29 June calendar fans)! You can read all about Comic Heroes here and see the delights contained within the mysterious, Bat-emblazoned cardboard sleeve, on the left. A peek at SFX will have to wait because our copies have yet to descend on SFX Towers (boo!) but we can reveal that every reader will be getting a free Captain America pop up frisbee with their copy. Perfect for those dull moments in the office!

Our new workie Liam Corcoran. Check out his fine work in his daily Link-A-Mania updates.

This afternoon Nick is going to interview ER’s last-Doctor-standing and the star of Steven Spielberg’s new alien invasion series Falling Skies, Noah Wyle. Funnily enough the ladies seem much more excited about this than he is. Can’t think why. Rob meanwhile spent Friday on set of BBC Three’s new supernatural drama series The Fades – read all about it in a few issues time.

Rich got back to work after a couple of very pleasant days in the Lake District earlier this week. He’s been busy compiling the letters pages, and went on a man-date with Jordan to see Green Lantern. Disappointingly average (the movie, not Jordan, who was a wonderful movie companion). Speaking of Jordan regular readers won’t be surprised to learn that he’s been spending almost every spare minute since last week playing Ocarina Of Time 3DS. He reached the end of the Spirit Temple two days ago, which as anyone who’s played Ocarina knows is the game’s home stretch. He loves it so much, in a futile effort to make the game last forever he’s decided to complete every side quest and mini game (including finding all 100 Gold Skulltulas) before burning Ganon’s castle to the ground. It’s become a daily ritual for Jordan and Comic Heroes editor Jes (who wrote a legendary review of Ocarina for N64 Magazine back in the day) to gush about how amazing it is and think of ways to convince Nintendo to give Majora’s Mask the same treatment. In other words if you haven’t bought it yet, what are you waiting for?

Dave B and Ade at last week's Manga 20th Anniversary bash. They're dressed as the ever popular "Office Extra 1 &2".

Dave G is still on holiday and popped into the office to tell us about his new kite, while Dave B has spent most of the day preparing for a big cover planning meeting with Group Publisher Claire who is in town today. Dave’s also setting up plans for Comic-Con – we have an SFX panel at 6.30pm on Thursday 21 July in room 4 of the San Diego convention centre. Come and see Dave B, Rich, Tara Bennett, Joe McCabe and Bonnie Burton chat about how to get into the sci-fi business. Or don’t. Choice is a human right you know.

Russell’s been juggling watching The Twilight Zone season three, working on three different magazines, writing long personal email replies to various SFX readers and drinking gin. He also went to the gym four days in a row this week. We think he should take a deep breath and r-e-l-a-x…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “If Joffre was here right now I’d punch the little weasel-faced git’s face in.”

Whose Shoes? (Last week’s answer: they were Russell’s swim shorts. Still can’t believe we took a picture of those)

There was only one thing on the lips of the denizens of SFX Towers this Monday: a certain good man who went to war – and in particular the identity of one River Song. Not the most unpredictable twist in Who history, but production editor Russell was unafraid to admit Mr Moffat had him fooled till the end where Russell’s young nephews had it all sussed out. The office consensus? Marvellous. The best bit? The title of the next episode of course, had the entire office in fits that did.

BITE MY SQUISHY PADDED ASS! The postbag often brings unexpected delights.

It’s deadline week, so naturally we’ve been putting in the hours to fine tune the latest issue into a lean, mean sci-fi, er, magazine. The late hours can do funny things to a person though with Jon, Russell and Catherine indulging in bizarre conversations on everything from how you’d do The Human Centipede if you got it in charades, to the days when ex news editor Steve O’Brien used to strip topless, draw a six-pack with a marker pen on his torso and stick it in the magazine. Besides finishing SFX 211, Russell’s also started work on the next SFX special, meaning eight hours sleep is now a distant memory.

While we’re all working hard on the latest issue, Jes over on Comic Heroes has sent his latest baby, issue seven, out of the door – with features on Batman: Arkham City, The Punisher and comic-book supremo Grant Morrison. Pick it up on 27 June. Good news for all Comic Heroes subscribers too: from issue eight all subscribers will get the shiny cardboard wallet used on newsstands.

Rich is all about Super 8! He and Nick attended a screening a mere 24-hours ago you see. From the Amblin and Bad Robot logos appearing one after the other (iconic!), it was everything he hoped a collaboration between Spielberg and Abrams could be. His favourite film of the year so far. He should also mention the 20 minutes of Transformers 3 they saw. The scenes were totally random, so you couldn’t get any sense of story – of course, you could say the same thing of the whole of Transformers 2 – but it does look spectacular. The 3D is amazing, and there’s a spaceship action sequence from the movie’s opening that’ll make you ache to see Star Wars in three dimensions. There’s so much going on in each shot, though, that he’s worried seeing the whole film might break his head.

Nick rocked up on Radio 2 on Monday night, drafted by the BBC for a documentary about Development Hell (sadly not an hour of airtime devoted to his regular SFX column – though god knows that would be a fine and noble use of the licence fee). He was introduced to the sound of the Superman theme, almost as if money had been exchanged somewhere along the line. You can still catch it on iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b011lmq6. He pops up at around the 40 minute mark, and will, for a suitable fee, provide a voiceover for your next carpet sale. Meanwhile he was there for the screening of Super 8 last night and loved it to little Spielberg-shaped pieces. “Film of the year!” he’s saying. Though that year may be 1979.

Suits you sir. And lady.

Former prod ed Simon Withers was married at the weekend. Congratulations Simon! Dave B, Dave G, Rich and his other half Charlotte were in attendance for the happy day. Never before has team SFX looked so dapper (see right). Ade is wondering what the hell to watch on Saturday now the good timelord is on vacation for a few months. It wont be that stupid Robot Rabbit that’s for sure! Oooh hang on, Canadian Grand Prix and a bottle of Romulan Ale. Sounds like a plan.

It’s been an emotional week for Jordan – from giddy anticipation to heartbreaking aftermath. The cause of this rollercoaster? The announcement of Nintendo’s new console. For several hours before Ninty’s E3 conference he could be heard muttering “Please give it a proper controller. Please give it a proper controller…” Unfortunately what Nintendo unveiled, a Fisher Price iPad, was a far cry from their N64 and Gamecube heyday (well, that’s what he thinks) and had poor old Jordan lamenting another home console generation without his beloved Ninty. A stunning HD Zelda video did just enough to pull him out of a potential spiral of depression, but it was the 3DS announcements that got him most excited: Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Super Smash Bros. The Smash Bros announcement has also caused a trash talking email-war between Jordan (who favours Kirby) and Comic Heroes’s Jes (a Link man), unfortunately unprintable here. Come release day there’s going to be carnage, albeit colourful Nintendo carnage.

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Random Argument of the Week: Did the football overlap with Doctor Who and affect its ratings? Does it have to be the match or does the post-match discussion count? Does anyone care?

Whose Daleks? (Last week’s answer: it was Dave G’s bag!)

At SFX we get to interview some of the world’s biggest movie stars, go on set for future blockbusters and watch episodes of Doctor Who weeks in advance (more on that later). But there are few things more exciting than new issue delivery day, and reading your reactions on the forum and website.

FROM THE OFFICE may be more than a little biased, but it’s a cracker with a world exclusive Torchwood: Miracle Day feature, Fannish Inquisition with Pegg and Frost (did your question make the cut?), news on the new Thundercats and a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen written by Sarah Jane Adventures writer Phil Ford. Read the full preview online now or pop to the shops and buy it or buy a digital copy and magic it to your monitor as fast as the interwebs will allow.

Last weekend the two Daves, Jordan, Rob and Official Xbox Magazine Editor Jon Hicks took to the stage at London Expo for a panel/Q&A on how to break into the tricky world of Sci-fi and magazine journalism. All went well, suspiciously well in fact. We’re convinced one of the team must have made a deal with a crossroads demon somewhere along the way. While the rest of the panel retreated to the pub for a much deserved pint, Jordan nipped to the press room for a chat with Futurama voice actors Billy West, Maurice LaMarche and Phil LaMarr. Fun as it was to witness Billy West having a three way conversation with himself as Fry, Farnsworth and Zoidberg Jordan’s mind was elsewhere – specifically the Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3DS demo units downstairs. He queued for 40 minutes in the morning (after a two and a half hour journey from his front door to the Excel Centre) to play 10 minutes of a level he’s played at least half a dozen times on the N64/Gamecube/Wii and still managed to feel all weak at the knees. June 17 can’t come soon enough.

Dave and Rob take their love of Game Of Thrones a little too far.

Speaking of queuing, last night Dave G, Rich and Jordan spent 20 minutes in line at the local cinema in Bath for X-Men: First Class tickets (pesky half term) – their verdict? A resounding thumbs up, even if Banshee and (furry) Beast were a bit naff. As if a trip to the cinema wasn’t enough fun for one day, yesterday the team collectively descended on a local pizza parlour for a leisurely lunch. Anyone would think it wasn’t deadline week. Eep!

Russell returned to the radio for the first time in 15 years (he used to do football reports on Capital Radio, you know!) when he was interviewed about Daleks by Ian Collings on TalkSport on Tuesday. All went well – our man predicted that the pepperpots wouldn’t be off our screens for long and would certainly be back in time for the 50th anniversary – although the conversation did get off to a rocky start when there was some disagreement over whether 2013 was two years away or one year away. Listen again here from just before the 47 minute mark.

Talking of Who, there’s been near pitched battles in the office as to who gets the “A Good Man Goes To War”. Russell, who’s reviewing it, won and watched it (twice) last night. His verdict? Well, he’s torn between four and a half and five stars…

Mmm, super-delcious cupcakes!

Nick made Fearne Cotton go “Wow!” yesterday. No, calm yourselves, ladies – he simply had his X-Men First Class review quoted on the jock-poppet’s Radio 1 show (read it for yourselves here). He hasn’t felt this thrilled since he had his name read out on Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart’s Junior Choice in 1756. He also hosted a Western themed Couch Potato at the Fortress of Setchitude last week. He’s spent the last couple of days writing it all up while listening to non-stop Ennio Morricone soundtracks. We’ve noticed that he’s started to squint. And desperately needs a shave. And as for the poncho… And look, he really shouldn’t be shooting people, even if they are lowdown dirty varmints and godless sons of coyotes. Nick was also deeply touched when his friend Helen rose to his challenge to make Superman-themed cupcakes as cool as the ones he saw in Smallville the other week. See elsewhere on this page for photographic proof. Naturally it’s the only proof that’s left…

A night spent in the company of Psychoville has left Rob scarred and wondering if the silent singer is going to appear in the office (the second series ends brilliantly, by the way). A big box of Game Of Thrones goodies from HBO was a nice treat, although the undoubted highlight of the week was a sneak preview of League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1969. So, so cool…

Ade has given up smoking for the good of the empire and is currently sat in the corner of the SFX office with “Bio Hazard” yellow tape around his desk. And finally congratulations to erstwhile production editor Simon Withers, who is getting married this weekend. The two Daves are ushers, and tonight is the stag do. It could get messy.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I think it’s quite creative to invent a whole new lewd hand signal.”

Whose bag? (Last week’s answer: they were Rob (tin cans) and Jordan’s (i-ear) headphones!)

Welcome, one and all, to the glorious return of FROM THE SFX OFFICE! This fly on the wall has been a busy bee of late (all those pages don’t write themselves you know) but now the klaxon has sounded on issue 211, he’s free to fly around the interwebs and tap insider information, direct from the life vein of SFX towers. We may have mixed our metaphors there somewhere.

Workie Crom, snapped here in the pub. Not all workie's get this kind of treatment you know.

In our absence issue 210 has hit the shelves, Thor thundered into cinemas across the land (for the record the office consensus is a resounding thumbs up) and Smallville bowed out after 10 years on the small screen (for the record the office consensus was a resounding “meh”). Looking to the future, team SFX will be powering down to London next weekend for MCM Expo, where the two Daves and Jordan will be taking to the stage on Saturday at 2pm for a panel on “How To Get Into Sci-fi Journalism”. If you’ve ever wanted to write for a living, don’t miss it!

Nick confronted Conan the Barbarian last week. Yes, perhaps the most improbable team-up since Spider-Man met Howard the Duck. He was interviewing Jason Momoa, star of this summer’s upcoming Conan reboot. We like to imagine they tore into roast hogs’ heads and knocked back flagons of raw ox’s blood while sultry-eyed Cimmerian wenches laughed at the quotable bits. But it probably involved neatly-cut sarnies, complimentary Perrier and a hovering publicist.

Last night Dave B and Nick ventured to the eminently championable Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath (http://www.mrbsemporium.com/), where China Miéville was in town to promote his fine new novel Embassytown. Some splendid nibbles were consumed, vocabularies were expanded in true Miéville style (word of the night: “epiphanic”) and the man himself was later found arguing with Nick over a picture of a sea beast. “Dude, it’s an octopus!” maintained the novelist. “It’s a squid!” countered the journalist. A careful count of tentacles was demanded. When it came to nine, they agreed to call it a squidopus.

Rich is catching up on some very glamorous adminny stuff, wondering what star rating to give to “The Rebel Flesh”, and looking forward to seeing Attack The Block tonight. Ade, over the past two weeks, has been working on top secret plans for the Weekender 3. He’s also getting very excited about attending San Diego Comic Con in July (anyone coming over?), Man Utd winning the league, Doctor Who (which gets better each week) and Darth Vader himself (Dave Prowse) calling up to ask why he’s not getting SFX anymore!

Rob grew a beard especially for this picture. He always wears the gloves.

In between dressing up as Wolverine and becoming utterly obsessed with Game Of Thrones, Rob has somehow found time to interview Bob Hoskins, get beaten at football, spend a glorious morning with advance copies of Alan Moore: Storyteller and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century: 1969 (spoilers: they’re both terrific) and release a record (which you can download for free from www.robandtherules.com). He is surviving on a diet of orange Lucozade and Hobnobs.

Ian isn’t here. Russell is knackered. Ditto Catherine. Jordan on the other hand is full of beans having finally moved to Bath, meaning early mornings are a thing of the past for the rosy-cheeked scamp. Late nights aren’t though, at least they won’t be once he gets a bed of his own and no longer has to sleep on the couch in front of the TV – a sure fire recipe for late night gaming. Despite a totally unnecessary lack of winks, he’s still bouncing around after meeting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost last week for next issue’s Fannish Inquisition, and his discovery yesterday that Bath swimming pool has a Jacuzzi and a slide. A slide! Age restrictions apply, but fortunately his boyish good lucks were enough to fool the guard, who knew looking like a 15 year old would pay off so handsomely?

PS. It’s Dave G’s birthday tomorrow, everyone wish him a good ‘un!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I’ll have a Rob Knob.”

Whose headphones?: (You’d be surprised how much a person’s headphones says about them, bonus SFX points* for guessing the two owners)

*SFX points are 100% irredeemable everywhere. Except in your dreams.

Deadline stress + moving crates = body horror

Sad times in SFX towers, the team are moving out of our plush office in t-minus three days. The good news is we’re not moving buildings as previously planned, huzzah! Instead we’re moving downstairs to an even bigger office and we’ll still be surrounded by friendly marketing bods. Rich’s ingenious plan: cut a hole in the floor (preferably with a tommy gun, Looney Tunes style) and simply drop down, crushing any unfortunate souls beneath us in the process. Well, it would save the effort of packing up years worth of accumulated tat.

Moving office will bookmark an exceptionally eventful week for the team. For starters last weekend Rich, Nick, Rob and Jordan nipped down to the Big Smoke for a weekend of comic convention mayhem at Kapow! Thanks to all the readers who came up to our stand and said hello, hope we didn’t scare any of you off! You can read exactly what we thought in issue 209, on sale 4 May, but we can tell you a fun time was had by all. Particularly Jordan, who managed to get a seat on the front row of the Merlin panel thanks to SFX’s VIP pass, and Rob who had a close-encounter with Moon director Duncan Jones.

Despite the disappointing Misfits news to come out of Kapow! (if you haven’t heard Robert Sheehan is leaving) Rich was on a Misfits high after the event having met Iwan Rheon and Lauren Socha (Simon and Kelly respectively). He’s now chatted with four out of the five ASBO heroes – the only one missing from his list: Nathan. Not content with a weekend in the capital, Rich went back to London on Monday, briefly, to talk Heroes And Inspirations with Psychoville guys Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. The lucky so and so.

Pic courtesy of www.termight.co.uk

Nick had a great time in the unseasonal sunshine at Kapow! – who knew Islington could be so glorious? He had fun catching up with pals, scamps and reprobates from the comic book firmament – the legendary Dave Gibbons dropped by the SFX stand and made off with a copy of Comic Heroes – and caught some panels and screenings while surviving on a desperate diet of hot dogs and doughnuts. His verdict? Falling Skies is perfectly fine but nothing we haven’t seen before while Attack The Block looks like a laugh riot. The Sunday afternoon costume parade proved to be the highlight; he’s still chuckling at the Penguin and sighing a little wistfully at the thought of Phoenix. Wednesday saw Kapow! tsar Mark Millar descend on Bath (honestly, what do we pay these border patrols for?) and visit the SFX office. “It’s just like the Daily Planet!” he cried, though we’re still trying to work out who’s Jimmy Olsen.

Dave G has also now spent more of the past five days in London than his own home, watching a summer blockbuster on Sunday and going to the press launch of Batman Live on Tuesday. Yesterday he had a day of dinos in the capital, doing his bit for a BBC 4 documentary on prehistoric beasties in film and chatting to Andrew Lee Potts and Hannah Spearitt about Primeval season five. He also discovered a chink in London’s comprehensive consumer market – a severe lack of decent dino t-shirts. Boo!

In other news: overseeing three titles in the SFX family means illustrious Editor-In-Chief Dave B exists in perpetual deadline mode: this week the publishers and printers are chomping at the bit for SFX 209. Russell’s recovering from four days in Budapest and has three trillion pages to sub edit, so is perhaps not at his best. Jordan meanwhile has been beaming ever since he was recognised on a crowded commuter train by a reader on Tuesday. Unfortunately the mad dash for the door at Bristol Temple Meads meant he wasn’t able to catch the name of the friendly fellow, but if it was you: hello! Ade enjoyed meeting Mark Millar yesterday and is chuffed at receiving a F1 Fleece from a certain Jenson Button! Which got him thinking: if he asks nicely would Jensen put a bloody great big SFX logo on his spoiler?

Hiding somewhere in this photo of "Leadworth green" are two SFX writers, pretending to photograph the Atraxi.

You might have noticed that Ian was mysteriously absent from last week’s From The Office. That’s because he was too busy shambling along a street in East London, groaning, smeared in fake blood, pretending to be a zombie for forthcoming horror-comedy Cockneys vs Zombies (written by James Moran). Doing 12 hour days in blazing heat has given him a new-found respect for “supporting artistes”; look out for a feature on the experience in a zombie special later this year. At the weekend, he jaunted off to Cardiff to check out a four-hour coach tour of Doctor Who locations.

Colin Baker in gingerbread man form, naked as God surely intended.

This was pretty fun, but the highlight proved to be the home-cooked gingerbread Doctors (well, the Doctor has always wanted to be ginger…) provided by tour guide Helen. Unfortunately, an icing shortage meant she had to make some naked Colin Bakers (yikes!), but they were still delicious.

Random discussions of the week: Nick, Jordan and Rob talking about Converse trainers and comfy boots, Rich and Jon talking about a hairy Incredible Hulk and the entire office pondering why so many action stars share the initials JB: James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jeremy Beadle. All the tough nuts.

Whose Boots? (Last week’s answer: Bit of a cheat – it was Jes’ t-shirt! (the editor of sister mag Comic Heroes if you didn’t know))

It’s been an anxious week in SFX Towers. With issue 208’s arrival imminent (our redesign issue) the postie has been a figure of child-like hope and ultimately dashed expectations. Until yesterday when our TARDIS-tastic new issue finally docked at Starship SFX! That noise never gets old.

You can read all about it in our new issue preview, and once you’re done why not take a gander at all the work that went into crafting your new look SFX? In related new issue, er, news the latest Comic Heroes has just gone to press, so editor Jes Bickham is doing the happy dance around the office. There’s no rest for the friendly comic-book loving types though it seems as we’re putting Jes back to work next week on the next SFX special, which is all about anime. Holiday, wassat?

Take a look around the top floor of SFX towers and you’d think some fatal contagion had made the rounds, with marketing bods dropping like flies. This could because nearby demolition is causing ominous rumblings underfoot, but more likely it’s because of a company switch around which will see SFX relocated to our new home just round the corner in the very near future. First pics in two weeks time!

Rich, Nick, Jordan and Rob are getting ready for Kapow! Comic Con this weekend in London (come drop by our stand and say hello if you’re there), while Rich, the lucky so-and-so has also just interviewed Steve Pemberton of The League Of Gentlemen and Psychoville fame, having spent the morning raving about the first two episodes of the new series. Keep an eye out for that interview in a future issue.

Quorra and Sam Flynn looking a little red-faced

Nick, Dave G and SFX blog-droid Will Salmon headed to London on Monday evening for the dribblingly anticipated press launch for the new series of Doctor Who. Complimentary crisps were scoffed, Lizo from Newsround was schmoozed and, yes, “The Impossible Astronaut” and “Day Of The Moon” were duly watched and judged to be fabulous. Team SFX bumped into Life On Mars co-creator, and longtime pal of the mag, Matthew Graham on the way home, and he earned himself a place in heaven for upgrading them all to first class. The soot-faced Future Publishing peasants tugged their caps and muttered “Gawd bless yer, Mr Graham, yer a toff and no mistake.” Ninety minutes of high-end geek conversation in luxury seats ensued. Bliss.

Tuesday also found Nick on the TARDIS set, on a classified mission. He spent a deliriously happy five minutes spinning dials, cranking levers and flicking switches, resetting all of Matt Smith’s carefully calibrated settings (“Have you seen what he’s done to the lateral balance cones?” he was heard to mutter, crossly). And then he combusted into a pool of pure joy.

Still recovering from a weekend spent pickling his liver in the Lake District, Rob has spent the week comforting himself with soft drinks, rejuvenating potions and gentle exercise. He has also been scarring himself all over again with a re-read of The Walking Dead from issue one, and is thoroughly excited about Kapow! this weekend.

Ahead of this weekend’s trip to London Jordan steamed down to the Big Smoke yesterday for a day of square-eyed videogaming fun. Being the sunniest day of the year with near tropical temperatures in the Big Smoke it was almost a shame he spent the whole day inside popping the heads of undead nasties and meeting gaming hero Suda 51. Almost. Ade meanwhile is in sunny London today with the boys and girls of Marvel talking superheroes and showing off the sexy new look SFX!

SFXers clashed on the football pitch again on Monday when Russell’s Goalrushe took on Rich and Rob’s Bath Galaxy. It was a titanic clash, with Russell’s team eventually emerging 4-2 victors – but Galaxy played out of their skins and gave the team eight places above them in the league a massive scare.

At home Russell has been relaxing watching Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner yet again (on Blu-ray). Last night saw him get to the end of the run with the final episode and he enthused: “It’s just amazing. Even more incredible than I remember – the most remarkable hour of British television EVER!”

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Touching my own genitals is like dancing with an Octopus.”

Whose T-shirt? (last week’s answer: it was Jordan’s t-shirt!)

With a mere six days till SFX regenerates and shows off its shiny new threads to the known universe excitement levels in the office are reaching meltdown temperatures. At least they would be if it hadn’t been brought to the team’s attention in Monday’s regular planning meeting that we have a mere three weeks to craft issue 209, one week less than usual. Thanks a bunch William and Kate.

Not that the inevitable deadline nightmare put us off hopping in a car and zipping to Ade’s house for the latest Couch Potato. We can’t tell you what Rich, Rob, Jordan and Ade spent their afternoon and evening watching just yet, but we can tell you there was an unusually large amount of chat about hair. Hmm.

Some of you may have even spotted that the cover of our new issue has already snuk its way online. Be sure to check it out up close on the right. Subscribers will be getting their copies on Monday, a little later than usual because of an image embargo. But trust us it’ll be worth the wait with new regular features such as “20 Things We Love About…”, a space to showcase your collections and a scarifying new horror columnist Penny Dreadful. Lovely new paper too!

It’s been a zombiefied kind of a week for Rob, who has been reviewing The Walking Dead for Comic Heroes and making preparations so that he’s not caught on the hop when the apocalypse eventually arrives. His fool-proof plan so far involves hiding in the biscuit aisle of his local supermarket and improvising some kind of custard cream cannon. Jordan meanwhile has bid zombies farewell for the time being, space zombies that is as he completed Dead Space 2 this weekend. The good news is this means he can finally sleep without waking up in a cold sweat from Necromorph-induced night terrors. The bad news he’s now playing Homefront while watching Jericho for the first time and lives in fear of an imminent invasion from some hostile foreign nation.

Nick gives a Cyberman his best Paddington stare.

Nick is eyeball-deep in words, writing up no less than three interviews for next issue, but still found time to abscond from the office on Tuesday, heading to London to check out the Doctor Who Experience at Olympia (yes, the space-apple never falls far from the time-tree…). If you haven’t been, it now comes with the official Setchfield seal of approval. He’s still raving about the 3D Weeping Angels, though he’s reaching for the Optrex after all the non-blinking involved. His world was also rocked by the new Captain America and Doctor Who trailers. It’s safe to say his geek blood is fizzing.

Rich has just had a natter with top author/critic Kim Newman and is also wondering how he can watch The Killing (the first three episodes are ace!) without it taking over his life. There’s sci-fi to watch too! Ade has been explaining to his nosy neighbours why his house was re-arranged for a Couch Potato photo shoot yesterday what with cameras, lighting equipment and more. They don’t miss a trick on his road. He’s also very excited to have seen the new Doctor Who trailer this week. “Looks scary” he was heard mumbling from behind the cushion.

This is what happens when you hand a review in late.

Ian had a rather harrowing start to the week, when one of our felinophile Reviews Editor’s beloved cats went missing. Thankfully, after three days tramping around the neighbour shouting the kitty’s name and attaching laminated “lost cat” posters to lampposts, the missing moggy was located in a neighbour’s cellar – phew! He has some words of advice for anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation: “Watch lots and lots of Battlestar Galactica – the remake – to take your mind off it. Everyone in it is having such a depressing time that it puts pretty much any personal mishap into perspective.” Wise words.

Russell surprised us all this week by offering to review an anime movie! The non-Japanese animation fan sat at home last night watching Castle In The Sky and declared today, “It was really quite good!” Maybe we should set him up with Akira next. Dave G is still recovering from a mammoth conference call (shame it wasn’t a round table) with the Camelot cast that seemed to include half the population of the USA trying to get a question in edgeways…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Do what you did to me and see if she enjoys it.”

Whose T-shirt? (Last week’s answer: they were, back left to front right, Jordan, Catherine, Dave G, Nick, Rob, Russell, Rich, Jon, Ian and Dave B!)

Mmm, magazine fresh.

With few exceptions, the most pant-wettingly exciting day of the month around SFX Towers is the day we finally get our eager mits on the fruits of our fevered minds – new magazine day!

In the past we would get dozens and dozens of copies in the office, so many in fact we would use them to wrap birthday presents or build tiny forts. Alas the forts are no more as, being an environmentally friendly multimedia company, Future (SFX’s publisher), have reduced the number of copies each magazine under its umbrella receives, and limited deliveries to two days a week. The upshot of all this boring corporate speak? A copy of issue 207 didn’t land in SFX Towers until Tuesday of this week, despite the fact subscribers were getting them as early as last Thursday. Maybe FROM THE OFFICE should pick up a subscription?

New issue aside, the talk of the office this week has been the cracking third season of Being Human, specifically the amaze-o series finale. Most of us have seen it now, but with the odd team member yet to get their hands on a copy, those of us who have experienced its wonders have been forced to adopt stealth tactics that would make Bond proud and keep any and all conversation to the pokey kitchen. Needless to say you won’t want to miss it, and if you’re wise you’ll heed Dave Golder’s advice and watch it live on Sunday night.

It’s a day of meetings for many of us. This morning Jordan strolled across to our other office just down the road to check out Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean and Dave B is in a meeting downstairs making many exciting plans for the future, including ones for our imminent redesign. Speaking of the redesign we can reveal that it comes with something rather special on the newsstands, though we can’t tell you what it is yet. Sorry to be such a tease. This afternoon we’ll be talking about the next Special and covermounts for future Specials too. If people have ideas, they’re welcome to go here.

With a copy deadline looming, Ian is juggling the desperate chasing of materials and images for the reviews section with preparations for a meeting about cover-mounted gifts – having sat up into the wee hours wracking his tiny brain for creative spins on the humble fridge magnet, sew-on patch and so on. This isn’t proving good for his blood pressure, prompting a series of Malcolm Tucker-style angry tirades. Sadly, these are too obscene to share, but his last one, which involved the phrase, “The tip of a massive iceberg of ****s!” was a bit of a classic.

Someone call Antiques Roadshow.

On Monday Nick took the train down to the big smoke for a screening of Battle: Los Angeles and took the afternoon off to visit the Natural History Museum, or dino museum as it’s known round these parts. He returned with a video of the animatronic T-Rex, which he seemed very excited about when showing it to a somewhat indifferent Rob and Jordan. The youth today, eh? He also discovered this rather nifty electronic Star Wars game under his desk, which his tiny self received on Christmas day 1980. Makes you wonder what else he’s got stashed under there.

Monday also saw SFXers lock horns in battle! On the football field that is. Rob and Rich (Bath Galaxy) took on Russell’s Goalrushe in the Future five-a-side league and it was quite a match. Rob and Rich probably won’t be too happy reading this but… Goalrushe won 12-1! And Russell got two of them. Rob took solace in the fact that he managed to nutmeg Russell at one point – although his performance has convinced him he has to live better – “or quit something” the Jarvis Cocker lookalike gasped at the end.

Rob’s week has mainly involved pushing his single culinary talent – making pancakes – to the extreme. In between all the sugary goodness, he’s shared an evening with the Sharktopus (bitey), been almost impressed by The Cape (fighty) and enjoyed Korean fantasy Rise Of The Demon Empire (far from Blighty). This all helped make up for the fact that, thanks to Russell, he’s been hobbling around the place with a snapped big toe nail (five-a-side is a rough game), but he will have his revenge…

Rich just interviewed Shrek. There’s nothing to add to that, really. Meanwhile Jordan finished watching Angel for the first time this week and finally understands what it’s like to be a Browncoat. No he’s not getting his Whedon fanbases in a fudge, rather it’s the fact that he reacted to the final episode with a strange mix of elation (at how sublime it was) and anger that (comics aside) there would be no more. Y’see he’s never had that with Firefly because Serenity was such a fitting way to cap off the series. He also got very excited this morning when he discovered that Misfits is coming out on Blu-ray, another excuse to watch it all again. Huzzah!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I always feel safer with pop stars who are shorter than me.”

Whose pocket contents? (Last week’s answer: it was Nick’s mug!)

Soon this will be full of lovely pages. We hope.

One week after the “big move” and team SFX are finally settling into their new positions in SFX towers. Jordan’s getting a bit of colour in his cheeks from all the sun streaming through the window (that’s the plan at least), art bods Catherine and Jon now have a ginormo board between them for the next issue and Russell’s moaning about the fact he has further to walk to give pages to Nick to proof. You can probably guess it’s been a bit of a slow week.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been some excitement. Dave B and Ade are out of the office today visiting Great Ormond Street Hospital to hand over the £2,000 raised through the SFX Weekender charity auction, and Dave Golder’s charity haircut. Rob’s out of the office today too after upping sticks and moving to Bath last week. The problem is no-one’s quite sure where he is. Our working theory: his new landlord has him imprisoned in some dungeon cellar. Or he booked the day off. Or he’s at his induction. We like the first theory best.

Nick is deep in prep for next issue’s mammoth Doctor Who feature – a calling that even found him meeting Steven Moffat’s cat on Monday night (it’s the most beautiful cat in the world, by the way, and he had to be persuaded to hand her back as he left Chez Moff). Elsewhere, he’s finally started to whittle down the perilously tottering pile of SFX‘s that have been breeding on his desk for the past three years (tip to Nick – file horizontally, not vertically). Kirky is blinking in the sudden sunlight, and rather grateful that she hasn’t died beneath a glossy landslide of back issues.

Tasty chocolate courtesy of Kell Harker. We approve.

After spending Saturday at Cardiff International Comics Expo, on Monday travel chaos meant Jordan gave up trying to get to work, and spent the day lounging round the house all day in his pants, playing Bulletstorm for giggles. For those that don’t know, Bulletstorm is a shooter where you earn awards for pulling off “Skill Shots”, like kicking someone into a cactus (Pricked) or ramming an enemy to death with a hot dog cart (Fast Food). His favourite? “Fire In The Hole”, which you earn for shooting mini-bosses where the sun don’t shine. And Ebert thought videogames could never be art. He also spent yesterday to-ing and fro-ing between screenings in London, and had no problem keeping himself occupied in Soho for three hours during the wait between the second and third films. We’re saying nothing.

Rich is trying to wrangle new ideas for the news section into some kind of tangible form and is really looking forward to watching Rubber, a film about a psychotic tyre. What could possibly go wrong? Dave G meanwhile is still smarting at his failure to get “Sporch” trending on Twitter after Sunday’s superb episode of Being Human. To cheer him up we’re patenting a range of caravan-friendly kitchen/tool-bench hybrids for future creation: Spoondriver anyone?

Ian has been weeping with relief that this issue just involves doing a reviews section (albeit a bigger-than-ever-before reviews section…), without any interruptions by Christmas, New Year, or the SFX Weekender, or having to edit a special issue of the mag simultaneously. This allowed him to spend two whole days on Monday and Tuesday catching up with his unread emails. It also means that he has FINALLY got round to compiling the results of the SFX Art Challenge that we issued, er, some time in November. Ahem. Expect to see the results of that go live very shortly…

On Tuesday the entire team went down to the Art Studio two by two to have their mugshots taken for the next issue. Russell decided to wear a white shirt, despite explicit instructions not to, and the fact he never wears white. Oh how we laughed. Speaking of Russell, he stayed at home yesterday and wrote the ed’s letter to a special he’s editing in six months’ time. The loon. We can’t tell you what the special is yet, though…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Jack Duckworth was my childhood hero. We were obsessed with Jack Duckworth.”

Whose Mug? (last week’s answer: they were Russell’s kicks)

The view from one of the SFX Office windows. We'll be honest there are better views around Bath.

THE OFFICE IS A COMPLETE KERFUFFLE! OK, we might be exaggerating a little but if Godzilla were to tear through the SFX office it probably wouldn’t look much different to the way it did earlier today. The reason? To better accommodate our ever expanding team we pulled the old office switcheroo and most of us have moved desks. For anyone else moving three feet to another chair wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you’ve got years worth of accumulated sci-fi tat tucked into every nook and cranny moving suddenly becomes a feat comparable to evacuating Hoth.

Ian and Nick managed to escape this morning’s musical chairs (“I can never be moved!” declared Ian), but Jordan is particularly pleased with his new window view over picturesque Bath, even if all he can see is a slate roof, a couple of chimneys and a lamppost. Dave B and Jon meanwhile are no longer downstairs (huzzah!) and have been re-assimilated into the SFX hive mind to start work on issue 208 – the redesign issue. In fact this morning we had our first in-depth flatplan meeting for the new issue, which explains why FROM THE OFFICE is arriving on t’interwebs a little later than usual. It’s a brave new world, but an exciting one like Pandora, not tedious and dusty like Carpathia.

It’s been so exciting we almost forgot that we sent the latest issue, 207, off to the printers yesterday for the presses to work their magic. It’s all very hush hush for now, but we can reveal if you’re a fan of little green men you won’t want to miss it.

Adrain Hill disguised as a shark. Or possibly a pixie with a striking new haircut.

Rob’s taking the week off to play videogames and move house. But mainly to play videogames. Ade is out of the office too and has taken his son to visit the Doctor Who Experience in the Big Smoke. Jordan on the other hand was there on Tuesday (seems we can’t keep away) to play Portal 2 and chat to the writers, while this Saturday he’s off to Cardiff to take in the sights at Cardiff International Comics Expo. That’s if he can drag himself away from his Angel boxset, which has been devouring his every spare minute for the past month. He’s also getting unreasonably excited about the Nintendo’s 3DS after getting his first chance to play on one in the Trocadero HMV, all in spite of his vehement dislike of all things 3D, including the real world. Why couldn’t everything just be flat, like Super Mario World?

Now that Dave B’s back in the office Rich has picked up the news baton again and is beavering away on the exciting new look news section. Oh yeah, and he’s got a quiz to write. Dave G missed this morning’s shenanigans on account of the fact he was chatting with The Adjustment Bureau’s writer/director George Nolfi in London town. He also returned with exciting news about Merlin series four and managed to fit a trip to special effects house The Mill in as well. Phew!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Now I know what that naked child running down the street in Vietnam felt like.”

Whose Shoes? (last week’s answer, clockwise from the bottom: Jordan, Nick, Jon, Dave B and Rob’s jazzy socks!)

Jordan's coming across a little green thanks to the Paul iPhone app.

Having finally settled back in to the office after three days gallivanting round Camber Sands, the team is bracing itself for another upheaval next week as we start work on the first redesigned issue of SFX. More importantly than that, however, the team will also be playing musical chairs round the office and swapping seats to better accommodate our expanding family. Life as a sci-fi journalist can’t half be glamorous sometimes.

Despite this being our final week to get the latest issue finished before the publishers send round the hitmen, it’s been a week filled with (productive) distractions: Weekender feedback meetings (rest assured folks, all your thoughts are being taken into consideration) and an evening at Rich’s for the latest round of Couch Potato. Award yourself 500 bonus SFX points* if you can guess the theme from this choice quote: “This is the campest Starfleet I’ve ever seen.”

Russell’s as insane as ever. He actually came in on Monday morning with a LIST of what he’d watched over the weekend. Basically he didn’t leave the house except for some hunting and gathering. His list went something like this: Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea (six episodes and extras), Land Of The Giants (six episodes and extras), The Prisoner “Schizoid Man” commentary, Virgin Witch (sleazy Brit horror from 1970), The Strange Door (Boris Karloff chiller), episode five of Marchlands, “Abducted By The Daleks” (“for research purposes, honest”), Wake Wood (twisted new horror film) and non genre stuff like Alan Partridge on the internet (“brilliant!”), the extras on Mary And Max, Lee Mack sitcom Not Going Out, Laurel and Hardy in Bogus Bandits, a documentary on the Beatles at the Cavern and a YouTube debate on religion with Grayling, Hitchens, Dawkins and Scruton. Many of these were for work, he tells us. We think he needs a lie down. Pity he has half the mag still to sub…

Ade and his helmet. Now winging its way to the lucky winner of the Weekender charity auction.

Nick and Dave G are both living it large in the Big Smoke this morning. And by living it large we mean working. Nick is interviewing a certain X-person and Dave G is, er, experiencing the Doctor Who Experience. As exciting as this would usually be to Dave, it pales in comparison to the lifelong ambition he’ll be fulfilling there this afternoon as he be pops into broadcasting house to record a segment for Radio 4. Nothing to do with SF though so we weren’t really listening when he told us about it.

Mmm, thanks Verity!

Ade wants to say a massive thank you to Verity Hayter for sending us an amazing package of sweetie goodness all the way from Scotland. We’ve been diving in all morning as its another manic deadline week and a sugar rush will be much appreciated.

Ade’s also really pleased to tell you that we have raised just over £2000 from the Great Ormond St auction we did at the Weekender, not forgetting of course the money Dave Golder raised by getting his head shaved. He’ll be taking a trip to the hospital in a couple of weeks so will let you know how it all goes.

Rob has finally found somewhere to live in Bath, and although he’s sad to be (temporarily) leaving his girl and his cat, he’s pleased he won’t have to get up five minutes after going to bed to make the trek from Oxford any more. He’s also finally got his hands on Batman: Arkham Asylum and is thoroughly enjoying spending his evenings pretending to be the caped crusader. Unfortunately, his attempts to lob a grapple hook on top of SFX towers and pull himself up haven’t quite gone according to plan - turns out it takes more than a pair of Batman pants to imitate the Dark Knight, which came as quite a surprise.

The Human Centipede, sent to us in a brown paper bag. We've no idea either.

Dave B and Jon are downstairs. Still. And Rich is reading (and enjoying) lots of pages from issue 207. The only thing that’s delaying Ian’s reviews section from being completed now is… er… Ian. So he’s at home, slaving away over reviews of Skyline, Primal and Doctor Who: Mara Tales, and trying not to let the fact that one of his cats keeps lying across the keyboard with its legs in the air distract him. Having experienced life in Ian’s shoes (not literally) yesterday while putting the videogames reviews page together, Jordan decided to spend the evening with some hardcore horror cinema – namely The Human Centipede – but wimped out at the last minute. To be fair he was feeling moderately suicidal after watching this traumatising (but ace) trailer for upcoming videogame Dead Island. Looks like wholesome family fun!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “And this is what human genitalia looks like.”

Whose Socks? (last time’s answer: they were Catherine’s (shiny gold), Jordan’s (black leather) and Dave G’s (black canvas) Converse!)

*Note: SFX points are non-redeemable and non-refundable.

If FROM THE OFFICE started with a sponsor’s message, this week it would be courtesy of the kind folk at Nescafé, Starbucks and Lemsip, because after a riotous few days in Camber Sands the SFX team are suffering from the after-effects of the SFX Weekender 2 – primarily a level of sleep deprivation that would be classified as torture under the Geneva convention.

To make matters worse, this week is deadline week on issue 207. Not that the issue won’t be up to our usual high standards – we are professionals after all.

Despite a post-Weekender haze there was a bit of excitement in the office on Wednesday when it suddenly occurred to the team that issue 206 was on sale up and down the land that very day. It’s easy to forget such things when you’ve got the small matter of a live on-stage interview with George Takei, or Keeley Hawes, or Craig Charles on your mind. Grab a copy today for features on Sucker Punch, Drive Angry and the full list of SFX Awards Winners, including the all-important Sexiest Male/Female!

It’s saying something when a Doctor Who set visit and a chat with Howard Overman about Misfits series three aren’t the most exciting things to come out of SFX Towers in a given week, but the SFX Weekender trumps them both (well, just). We could go on for hours about our highlights: hanging out with Steven Moffat and Russell Tovey in the bar, the subscribers’ breakfast, the SFX Awards, Dave Golder getting his head shaved (see below), The Llama God’s ingenious Maskerade costume (okay, bit of a stretch to call that one a “highlight”). But more importantly, the team would like to extend their thanks to each and every person who showed up to support our little sci-fi extravaganza. The reaction on the forum has been overwhelming and much appreciated. Roll on Prestatyn in 2012!

Dave Golder: master of hair dye, not so hot with the gel.

Rich is still in a post-Pontin’s daze. He’s still not quite sure how to adapt to the world that exists after the Weekender. Dave and Jon meanwhile are downstairs, but not for long because as announced at the SFX Weekender, from issue 208 the magazine will regenerate into its shiny new format. Don’t fret, we’re not throwing out the baby with the bathwater though, the content and features you know and love will remain largely the same, we’re simply giving it a swish makeover. Find out what all the fuss is about on 6 April.

A delicious chocolate cake given to us by the lovely Tania at the Weekender.

Nick is still comprehensively zonked from the Weekender. We blame the all-consuming adrenalin rush of interviewing Keeley Hawes live on stage – he’s still proud of the tough, interrogative journalism of asking her “So, Duran Duran or Spandau Ballet?” – though the first ten minutes of Outcasts sent him into a state of catatonic shutdown that he’s still trying to shift. He’s also trying to recover from the macho foolishness of his 5.30 am confrontation with the drunken man storming around Pontins. Tip to Nick: this is not a good idea if a) he’s bigger than you and b) you’re in your boxers. More happily, he spent Saturday night at the bar with Steven Moffat, having a magnificently geeky discussion of all things Bond. He’ll never be able to watch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the same way again.

Jordan, on the other hand, is starting to think he might be the only person in the country who actually quite likes what he’s seen of Outcasts so far. A bit dull, yes, but he’s a glutton for punishment – “the bleaker the better” he was heard muttering at one point. He obviously derives too much pleasure from work and life in general; tea duties for the next week it is.

Ian’s had a very Welsh week. It was off to Cardiff last week for Torchwood: Miracle Day interviews with Eve Myles, John Barrowman, Mekhi Phifer and Russell T Davies; then back to Cardiff again yesterday for Doctor Who, meeting Matt, Karen, Arthur and guest star Hugh Bonneville, and finally getting the chance to have a sneaky wander around that magnificent new TARDIS set (cor, it’s lovely). And he managed both trips without accidentally getting caught up in any kinky sexual scenarios, despite what watching Being Human had led him to expect. Result! Sadly, he can’t tell you anything he learnt – except, perhaps, that Hugh Bonneville is surprisingly fond of wine gums.

Ade is in London town seeing the film Paul today, but is still feeling the effects of the Weekender. His Facebook page over the last two days has been tagged with so many fab pictures from the weekend (many he can’t remember ever being taken) and he would like to thank everyone for making it one hell of a Weekender to remember, especially those who won items in the Charity Auction, which has made over £2,000 so far for Great Ormond Street.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Be more absorbent, you bastard!”

Whose Shoes? A Converse special! (last week’s answer: it was Rob’s desk – and yes, you have to guess all three)

There’s a distinct post-deadline feeling around SFX towers today. Apt really because yesterday we put the latest issue to bed, albeit kicking and screaming. You know kids, they never go quietly.

No-one’s more excited than Russell however because not only is 206 a blip in the rear-view mirror, but his vampire special goes on sale today. Make him feel happy by going out and buying a copy, eh? It’s really quite good. He’s also quite pleased that his football team is second in the Future Publishing table and is glowing from his captain writing in the match report, “Pass of the game goes to Russell for that exquisite through ball he played to Marc who finished with aplomb.” Bless!

Steering well clear of any and all sports during his week off (unless you count the serious work his thumbs got courtesy of a PS3 controller) Jordan returned to the office this week, only to duck out early on his first day back for the first press screening of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s new film Paul, immediately declaring it “the best sci-fi comedy since Galaxy Quest!” He was also pleased to discover his pithy 140 character twitter review re-tweeted no less than 83 times, thanks in no small part by a retweet from a certain Mr Pegg, only to emerge with egg on his face the morning upon discovering a wayward apostrophe had obliterated his grammatical integrity. As a punishment/reward (you be the judge) we’re sending him to see Nic Cage’s latest rug in action for a screening of Drive Angry 3D tomorrow. Wish him luck.

17 seconds ago there were two full deadline cakes on this plate. Thanks Kerry!

Much to Jordan’s chagrin (the PS3 versus Xbox360 debate rages on), Rob received a copy of Dead Space 2 this week and has been filled with gamer’s glee as he wages a one man war again those pesky Necromorphs. He also interviewed the mighty Warren Ellis and got to review a fresh pile of fantastic graphic novels for the next issue of Comic Heroes, so is feeling pretty pleased with himself.

Dave B and Jon are downstairs…

Nick celebrated his birthday on Saturday with a dish of Eggs Benedict at the Wolseley in Piccadilly, living out his Ian Fleming fantasies as ever. The moment was enlivened by a personal appearance by Cameron Diaz, but sadly she wasn’t dancing in her Spider-Man knicks, Charlie’s Angels style. But still, the birthday gods were smiling. Back in the office he was almost reduced to warm tears of gratitude by the SFX team’s spot-on choice of presents – Misfits series 2 on DVD and a SHIELD mug. Nick Setchfield, Tea Drinker Of SHIELD has a certain ring to it…

Ian’s taking some much deserved, post-deadline, pre-Weekender (one week to go folks!) time off today and tomorrow to catch up with The Sarah Jane Adventures series three, put together CDs of background music and on-stage stings for the Weekender, and rewatch bits of Blake’s 7 in preparation for meeting Sally Knyvette. Dave G meanwhile had a close encounter of the bovine kind recently during a trip to London for a screening of ITV 1’s new supernatural drama Marchlands, when a renegade cow on the line brought his train to a halt. Epic National Rail fail.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I’ve been doing nothing horrible and sticky.”

Whose desk? (last week’s answer: it was Ian’s random crap! Again!)

It’s only the second week back in the office and worryingly the team are already hurtling towards yet another impending deadline. Add to that a certain weekend-long sci-fi shindig we’ll be throwing in a mere three weeks and that relaxing Christmas holiday suddenly feels like ancient history.

So? It's a banana in a bow tie, what of it? (courtesy of reader Dana Lucas)

Not that we’ve any reason to moan though because this week two of the team got the opportunity to travel down to the Big Smoke for screenings of two of the New Years’ hottest properties. Nick was first up, journeying to Leicester Square for a preview of The Green Hornet. Much to his surprise the film was an unexpected treat, in fact he was even glad for the 3D glasses, which conveniently masked his tears of laughter. Keep an eye out for his review online later in the week. The highlight of the trip however wasn’t Seth Rogen’s wannabe-super hero shtick, but a near sighting of Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford, who was in town from the premiere of his (sadly non-SF) new movie Morning Glory. Regressing to a child-like state of giddy excitement Nick tried to glimpse a sight of the sci-fi icon, battling through the crowd outside the Empire cinema, but alas the call of the last train home ensured it wasn’t to be.

Ian went to a screening of episode one of the Beeb’s new science fiction (YES IT IS, KUDOS!) drama Outcasts last night, and judging by the subdued smattering of post-screening applause, wasn’t alone in finding it all a bit grim. Yeah, Battlestar Galactica was grim and that was brilliant, but it also had space battles and killer robots ‘n’ shit – as well as memorable characters, fascinating plot puzzles, and a sense of high-stakes urgency. It wasn’t all watery-eyed people standing around talking about how terribly sad they are. On the plus side: there’s a funny bit with Daniel Mays and a pig, and the trailer for the rest of the series included some intriguing elements which suggest that it could be worth sticking with the show, even if you’re not gripped by the opener.

He’d also like to remind you that time is running out if you want to pick up a copy of his Doctor Who special, which will be pulled from the shelves in less than two weeks! Don’t forget, you can also download it as an app for your iPad. And while you’re waiting for it to download why not check out this chap who does incredible sci-fi impressions. Good taste in magazines too.

After spending Tuesday night stranded on the roadside with smoke pouring out of his car, Rob has lost all faith in modern modes of transport and is holding out for either the invention of transporters or an office based accident that leaves him with the speed of the Flash. He also made his debut for the vaguely SFX-affiliated Future Publishing five-a-side football team this week and managed to score a goal in between swearing loudly and regretting every second of festive overindulgence.

Ade is in London town with the folks at 20^th Century Fox and is also busy with Weekender preparations. He’s very excited at the amazing items he has received for the Charity Auction he’s presenting on the Friday of the event, including a hat worn by Andrew Lee Potts in Primeval. Rich is on a Weekender trip too, having spent the last couple of days working on the schedule and brochure. Now it’s time for an epic meeting! Dave B and Jon meanwhile are downstairs…

After spending two entire evenings this week watching the never-ending Meet Joe Black on Blu-ray for review (“It felt like a lifetime” he was heard rambling, like the first words of a traveller returning to civilisation after days stranded in the desert) Jordan was happy to get back to his current obsession – Angel. He’s watching it for the first time having missed its broadcast during his drug and alcohol fuelled uni years (note: the previous statement may or may not be complete fabrication). He also made the bewildering decision last weekend to pay real money to see Season Of The Witch at his local world of Cine. The reason wasn’t for a good giggle at Nicolas Cage’s latest rug but to see Misfits ace Robert Sheehan in action. Sadly there were no tripling jokes to be found.

Russell’s finally free of his vampire special as it went to press on Tuesday. His relief was cut short by a quick look at the main SFX flatplan and seeing that there are still over a hundred pages to do in the next week. Undeterred he’s going out for a deferred celebration tonight, and since he hasn’t drank yet in 2011 it could get very messy…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Spider silk and a weighted hem, that’s the explanation for a magic cape?”

Whose Random Desk Contents? (last week’s answer: it was Jordan’s Mr Pricklepants!)

In most cases returning to the workplace after a fun, chocolate-filled, Christmas break is the trigger for those post-New Year blues to kick into full force. Not so in the SFX office where a tin of Quality Street was strategically unleashed on Tuesday to keep us in high spirits. It’s worked marvellously to date but now that only the yucky coconut ones are left we expect the team to fly into a sugar-less rage at any minute…

Before the collective tantrum, however, there’s just enough time to fill you in on the Crimbletide goings on around the office and give you a first glimpse at our latest issue, which hits shelves next Wednesday (12 Jan). As well as the features on Paul, Thor and Supernatural which grace the spiffing cover, inside you’ll also find a look at the beeb’s new sci-fi show Outcasts, Being Human USA and retro features on Carnivàle, An American Werewolf In London and Nicholas Meyer. For more information check out our full issue preview later today.

After a glorious Crimbo spent almost exclusively in front of the TV, Jordan is starting to feel cursed after missing his second screening in as many months. He missed the first, Black Swan, after someone threw themselves on the train line just outside London. And yesterday he skipped a screening of Battle: Los Angeles after developing Labyrinthitis – an inner ear infection that left him so dizzy he spent most of the day curled up in the foetal position. He’d be much more excited about his cool, SF-sounding, affliction if it hadn’t make him feel like he’d spent all night on a rollercoaster. Still, as Rich pointed out, at least it didn’t involve being chased round a magical maze by an army of Muppets and David Bowie’s codpiece.

Nick found himself engaged in an improbable bout of physical exercise yesterday, legging it after Rob, who was on his way to London for a screening, blissfully unaware that it had been cancelled the very minute he’d left the office. Given that no one here actually had Rob’s mobile number – well, he is new - the only way to stop him boarding the train was to pelt through the streets of Bath like a madman (seriously, who runs in public?) and execute a Seagal-style slo-mo dive onto Platform Two, crying “Nooooooooooooooooo!” Nick was later wrapped in a foil blanket and fed watery orange juice before a nice lie down, but he won’t shut up about these amazing things he’s discovered called endorphins. Well, it’s one way to burn off the Christmas Belgian choc blow-out.

Ade is back at SFX towers feeling rather plump from too much food and fantastic festive telly. His first week back has involved talking to actors to persuade them to give something up for the SFX Weekender Auction in aid of Great Ormond Street children’s hospital (see right for one of the top goodies up for grabs). So all of you going to the Weekender, bring your cheque books with you – we have some amazing auction items money can’t buy! Keep your eyes peeled to the website for a full list of items going under Thor’s Hammer. Can you believe the Weekender is under four weeks away? Eek!

Rich has already forgotten about the Christmas break, apart from the ace Doctor Who special, finally getting around to watching the flawless Toy Story 3 and staying up late to watch the Ashes. (I had to take advantage of my Mum and Dad having Sky Sports). Now it’s straight back into a steady diet of Weekender planning, sorting out the latest issue and trying to stave off a cold. Russell meanwhile, fresh from getting 7,346 Thornton chocolates and a toilet brush for Christmas, is now buried deep in work putting the finishing touching to his vampire special. There are only a few days to deadline and it’s all a bit manic. Be nice if he managed to give us just a little smile sometimes, though…

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Random Quote Of The Week: “That’s not a publicity still from Neverland, that’s a publicity still from Hook.”

Whose Christmas present? (Last month’s answer: they were Rich’s trainers!)

Russell was very pleased with his new shirt

There’s a certain school of thought (otherwise known as common sense) that says mid-week office parties are a very bad idea. Unfortunately SFX rarely subscribes to such sensible ways of thinking, particularly when there’s free booze involved, which is why the hungover inhabitants of SFX Towers are shuffling about like the living dead today. All while trying to send issue 205 off to the printers before the Christmas break.

But we had good cause to celebrate because yesterday afternoon it was the Future Excellence Awards (Future being our publisher) and SFX was up for four: Editorial Excellence, Best Cover, Best Website and Rising Star. We narrowly missed out/were robbed of Best Cover (for issue 194’s Doctor Who lenticular) and Best Website, and Jordan was highly commended in the Rising Star category (his certificate’s in the post). But it was Nick who brought home the gold, scooping the award for Editorial Excellence for his work throughout 2010. Congrats Nick!

As for the party, there might not have been people dressed up like Daleks or Pat Sharp manning the decks like at the SFX Weekender, but it was an epic evening for the entire team – a circus themed shindig with an open bar, sultry lady gymnasts, a test of strength, hoopla and (best of all) a dodgems! We’ll be taking most of the evening’s events to the grave, but here are a few things we learnt from the office Christmas party:

• Ian goes a little nuts on the dodgems, hammering the accelerate pedal so aggressively last night that he temporarily lost all feeling in his right leg. He also screams “kill” continuously while driving and has a bit of a sore throat now.
• Never eat free burgers.
• Rosie Fletcher from Total Film has an uncanny ability to materialise with bottles of beer every time one was required. We have renamed her The Magic Beer Fairy in honour of this.
• Jordan is able to recite the lyrics to the Fresh Prince Of Bel Air theme tune (including the verse not usually on the show) from heart and Ian discovered he knows a surprising amount of the lyrics to “Jump Around”.
• Future Christmas raffles are a swizz.
• Being a celebrity DJ from Massive Attack seems to involve standing around while someone at the back does all the work.
• When presented with a choice of six different types of whisky asking to try all of them is never a good plan…
• …Neither is asking for a bottle wine and four glasses, and then getting rid of the glasses, which was Russell and Dave G’s cunning plan for the evening.

Speaking of Russell the fact he resembles the living dead after consuming way too much beer, gin, Guinness, whiskey and wine at the Christmas party was a happy coincidence as today was the morning he had to do the photo shoot for the ed’s page of his vampire special. Needless to say hair and make-up was not required!

Rich meanwhile is working on getting the cover off to the printers, reading pages of the mag (it’s looking like a cracker of an issue!) and feeling pretty with it considering it’s the morning after the night before. Thanks for the bacon sarnies earlier, Ade! It’s also the duty of FROM THE OFFICE to draw your attention to this – Rich’s recent appearance on BBC 4 doc Mad And Bad: 60 Years Of Science On TV. Watch from 1 hour 15 minutes in to hear his thought-provoking warblings on The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

Dave and Jon are downstairs… and Ade is putting his finishing touches to SFX 205 before heading for the festive hills. Where on earth has this year gone he wonders!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “I knew, two and a half bottles in, it was time to go home.”

Whose Shoes? (last week’s answer: they were Kirky’s bat-boots!)

Being a sci-fi mag we’re always looking to the future at SFX, which is why there are few things more exciting around SFX towers than that small window between getting our own finished copies of the latest issue in the office and the day it’s unleashed on an unsuspecting public. Well, maybe one thing because this week we assimilated a new noggin into the SFX hive mind – Mr Rob Power, our new Editorial Assistant, who will become a familiar face across our range of magazines (SFX, Comic Heroes, the SFX Specials) in no time.

Those eyes look a bit shifty if you ask us.

Issue 204 goes on sale up and down the arctic tundra (aka the UK) next Wednesday, though subscribers can expect their copies to pop through the post any day now, and contains your first look at the latest top British telly, including season four of Primeval, season three of Being Human and the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Check back this afternoon for a full rundown of its juicy insides, but if you fancy a free copy of the Avatar Activist Survival Guide with your issue be sure to pick up a copy in ASDA next week.

Back to the new boy though, and Rob is settling in nicely, having just about shaken the feeling someone is going to tell him the offer of a job at SFX was actually an elaborate hoax, and is getting his teeth into his first brace of reviews. He has so far learned there are only so many comics he can fit in his bag, and that it’s impossible to hide baked goods from Nick Setchfield’s cake radar.

Jon is downstairs (cue ominous music…) but this week Dave B is nowhere to be seen around SFX Towers because he’s jetted off to Canada for the second time in as many months. FROM THE OFFICE can confirm rumours of a crippling Maple Syrup addiction are greatly exaggerated, however, as the motivation for his trip this week is a geek pilgrimage to videogame developers Bioware to see Dragon Age 2, a game Dave could only be more excited about if Hawk The Slayer was confirmed as a playable character. We make the odds on him never leaving 50/50.

Aargh, Jordan broke out of his cage!

Dave would also like to remind you that voting for the SFX Sci-fi Awards 2011 closes in a mere 5 days time (that’s Tuesday 14 December date fans), why not head over there now and make sure your voice is heard. And while you’re at it why not order our Doctor Who special, go on, it’s got a free bow tie and everything.

Ian is transcribing an interview with Being Human’s Toby Whithouse about new online spinoff Becoming Human, whilst desperately struggling to block out the strains of the Rentaghost theme as they bubble up from his subconscious. Don’t be surprised if the resulting news story ends up littered with references to “haunting melodies” and “supernatural ghoulies”. News Editor Guy Haley, meanwhile, was excited to see a comet career over the night sky in Bath. Current office theories: Superman’s escape pod, a Transformer, Elvis returning home.

Putting train woes to the back of his mind, Jordan has been getting all kinds of excited about Misfits after watching the remainder of season two on DVD this week, including the Christmas special, declaring it, “The greatest show on TV!” and it’s mere seven-episode run a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Having said that he is also worryingly eager to watch Resident Evil: Afterlife (for the second time) on Blu-ray for review. He may be the only person in the office prepared to actively campaign for a sequel, unless he’s committed first.

Ade would this week  like to send his condolences to the family of regular advertiser and friend John Merry of Merry Cult TV, who sadly passed away this week. Our thoughts are with you, from all of us here at SFX. RIP John.

Random quote of the week:
“Do you think Elton John is a national treasure?”
“Only if we bury him and send Nic Cage to find him.”

Random fact of the week: Russell gives Dave Golder a banana every day to “counter the effect” of his (naughty) cigarette habit. Russell also eats a lot of fruit. A lot of fruit.

Whose boots? (Last week’s answer: those packets of Monster Munch, Logan’s Run comics and Fat Boys 7″ were dug out of Ian’s bottom drawer)

Journalist or a waiter from an ice cream parlour in the '50s?

Seems the winter freeze has made us go a little doolaly this week. Well, how else would you explain this picture of Jordan embracing the fashion chic of a Jimmy Stewart character? Oh right, of course! Our Doctor Who special, which went on sale this Tuesday, and comes with its own free bow tie and pair of badges for every reader. And that’s before we even get to the fantastic 132 magazine featuring 100 reasons why we love Who, Katy Manning on her career as a companion and series six photos. What are you waiting for?

Picture from Twitter follower @EuclidianBoxes.

Special Editor Ian (as in he edited the special, though the other meaning is perfectly acceptable too) is a little concerned that people are not braving the snow to nip down the shops and buy our new Doctor Who special (discuss it over here) and would like to assure everyone that it’s worth risking falling on your arse as you slip-slide down to the shops to get a copy*. However, he is delighted that the first photos have started dribbling in of the free bow tie that comes with it being put to good use (see right).

Speaking of specials, Russell is looking pale and drawn at the moment: he’s in the office from nine in the morning till nine at night, working on both the mag and the next SFX special. Then when he gets home, “I’ve either had to watch The Avengers series six for review or a dreadful Jess Franco film like Killer Barbys for my special! SFX has taken over my life!” He says this, but we’re sure we saw him having a sneaky pint of Golden Bolt in the pub next door last night.

Discovered this week in the SFX cupboard, not sure about the likeness.

Rich, meanwhile, is actually quite enjoying coming into the office because it’s warmer than his house, but his highlights this week have both involved a trip down to the big smoke. On Tuesday he saw Tron: Legacy on a ginormo-Imax 3D screen. His one sentence non-embargo-breaking reaction: “It was exactly what I expected it would be.” Find out what that means when the review goes on the website in a few days time. Rich, Russell and Dave G are also still smarting a little bit from losing to Empire on a tie-break (!) at the Sky Movies quiz at the Entertainment Media Show/Collectormania London at the weekend. Rich in particular is kicking himself for not buzzing in with The Hangover sooner! It was great fun, though, and we’ll have them next time – massive thanks to the organisers!

Ade got into SFX towers today by riding a Tauntaun through the snow. Ugh. And he thought they smelled bad on the outside. Jordan meanwhile has been making his way into work sans Tauntaun by braving the laughable efforts of Network Rail, utilising the time spent on static trains wisely by sinking hours into his latest addiction: Chu Chu Rocket on the iPhone. What could be more satisfying in sub-zero temperatures than guiding an army of mice to the safety of their spaceships while avoiding giant mutant cats? Makes the hours fly by. He’s also been watching Twin Peaks season two and keeps getting the urge for coffee and pie, despite never having drunk coffee in his life. Fortunately he’s a big fan of mince pies.

*Warning, this does not constitute legal advice. Don’t get Claims Direct onto us once when you break your leg.

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Random quote of the week: “You snorted TARDIS dust?”

Whose Drawers? (Snarf) This random crap was found in the drawer of one SFX team member: bonus SFX points if you can guess who. (last week’s answer: it was Russell’s Flumper, which you helped us decide is in actual fact a jumper. Pointless discussion settled.)

It’s suddenly become awfully nippy outside, but in SFX Towers temperatures are running hot as the team works their fingers to the nubs to get not one but two magazines ready for the presses. Nubby fingers aren’t pretty you know – the things we do for sci-fi.

Some very cool True Blood season three promos courtesy of FX

Work on the next-but-one special is also well underway in the office, which has caused no end of confusion for production editor Russell, who was working on no less than five magazines simultaneously this time last week, the workaholic.

The talk of SFX towers this week of course was news of that Buffy remake sans-Monsieur Whedon. Reactions among the team ranged from “sacrilege!” to “sacrilege!”, with an afterthought of “Wasn’t Buffy brilliant?” If you hadn’t noticed, in topical fashion, we’ve also decided to dedicate our next Wishlist (or should that be un-Wishlist?) to Buffy 2.0 – give us your thoughts on the forum here.

If Buffy was a slap round the face, news of Marky Mark Wahlberg’s casting in the Uncharted adaptation was a full-blown kick in the pills for Jordan, who has written off the film after director David O Russell passed on (the obviously perfect for the part) Nathan Fillion. He refuses to talk about the matter but is in good spirits this morning after a night spent re-watching episodes 3 and 4 of Misfits and the latest episode of Chuck – a dangerously funny two and a quarter hours of TV guaranteed to make you feel warm and funny inside. He also urges everyone to vote for the SFX Awards 2011 before the polls close – in particular this line from Chuck: “Cool, a tiny weapons standoff.” Anyone who knows what he’s talking about vote here now.

Ian is on tenterhooks waiting for the boxes of our latest Doctor Who special to turn up – they’re on their way, apparently! In the meantime, he’s pumping industrial doses of Lemsip and Ibuprofen into his body in a desperate attempt to counteract the total system crash that occurs when the deadline adrenaline wears off and your body says, “Hang on a minute! I haven’t slept properly for two months!” Hopefully he can cling onto life long enough to write our Being Human feature for issue 204, otherwise you might end up with four or five pages that are just an empty space for you to do some colouring in.

Doughnuts!

This weekend sees Collectormania return to London, sorry the “Entertainment Media Show”, where team SFX will be competing in the Ultimate Film Quiz to be aired in part at a later date on Sky Movies. We need all the support we can get so anyone attending come and watch us triumph magnificently/crash and burn.

Ade is in London today checking out what Universal have planned for 2011 (ads managers need to keep ahead of the game you know) while yesterday it was Dave G who took a trip down to the Big City to interview the cast of Outcasts for sfx.co.uk. He saw a trailer while he was there but has been sworn to secrecy, though he did exclusively reveal [BANG] “Dave? Is that blood?”…

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Random Discussion Of The Week: With the cold weather the woolly jumpers also came out this week in SFX towers, or is it a fleece? That’s the question which kept the team occupied for an embarrassingly long period of time this morning as confusion raged over one team member’s baffling fleece/jumper hybrid dubbed a “Flumper” by no-one but us. Vote in the poll below and help us solve our pointless office debate.

Random Quote Of The Week: “You all really hate me.”

Whose Flumper? (Last week’s answer: It was Ian’s t-shirt!)

]]> http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/11/25/from-the-sfx-office/feed/ 9 http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/11/11/from-the-sfx-office-35/ http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/11/11/from-the-sfx-office-35/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:55:03 +0000 Jordan Farley http://www.sfx.co.uk/?p=40857 Back with your first look at our latest issue and some new faces round the office

A lot can happen in a fortnight. Wars can be won or lost, empires can rise or fall, your favourite show could be cancelled in the blink of an eye (sniff, we’ll miss you Caprica). When FROM THE SFX OFFICE takes a week off, however, we return in style with news of big changes in SFX towers and a sneak peek at our wizard new issue. Glad to see us back?

We only got our grubby mitts on it yesterday but above you can see the galaxy’s first peek at the latest SFX, issue 203, which will go on sale Wednesday 17 November. We’ll have the full breakdown of what to expect from its juicy insides later today, but Tron fans you’re in for a treat with an in-depth behind-the-scenes feature, a wallet to keep your glossy mag extra shiny, a collector’s disc complete with interviews, mini-games, behind-the-scenea features on the Tron: Evolution videogame and much more. Or if you’re anything like us you can whizz them round the office in a manner similar to the film’s gladiatorial disc arena battles. Be careful though, SFX accepts no responsibility if you take an eye out.

Kerry's much prettier than Jon. We like her already.

In other news, there’s been a bit of a shake-up in the office this week, with Dave B and Jon taking some time away from the mag and a pair of new(ish) faces stepping through the airlock. Guy Haley, who long-time mag readers will be intimately acquainted with, has returned from the wilderness to fill in as SFX’s news monkey while Deputy Editor Rich lords it over the rest of us. Meanwhile SFX newbie Kerry Haysom has become the new Catherine, and Catherine is the new Jon. Confused much? We’ve also finally got round to interviewing potential new Editorial Assistants, and have even picked a successful candidate. They seemed keen at the time but they don’t know what we’ve got planned…

After suffering from a nasty case of con-flu, Dave Golder has taken a week off to recuperate (which explains why the homepage has looked a tad anaemic this week), but even that didn’t stop him popping round like a ninja at some ungodly hour to drop off some work. Give that man a medal. Jordan on the other hand took last week off after a successful trip to London Expo, where he spent the vast majority of the weekend sneaking away to play Dead Space 2, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Goldeneye on the Wii (he’s still got it). His plans for a lazy week spent in front of the TV came a cropper, however, when his PS3 conked out on his first day back mere minutes away from the end of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon on Blu-ray. He still hasn’t seen the last 10 seconds, so don’t spoil it okay? Oh, and he also went to watch Matt Smith turn on the Christmas lights with the Doctor’s sonic in Cardiff last night, but spent most of the brisk evening worrying about Karen Gillan, who braved the cold with nothing but a sleeveless dress. Bless.

Has SFX finally jumped the shark? (terrifying teddy courtesy of the folks behind shark horror The Reef)

Nick has been writing up his piece on the Doctor Who Christmas special – which, rather splendidly, contains an interview in which Matt Smith utters the words “purple llama”, and no, you’re not getting any context, not just yet – and trying to feel seasonal amid the November gloom. He’s also been fondly revisiting The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in paperback form and laughing all over again. Oh, and he’s moved house, and spends his evenings gazing at a shiny new shelving system with something approaching love.

After two months of late nights (Maggie Thatcher’s not the only one who can get by on three hours sleep, it turns out) and non-existent weekends (see how we suffer for you?), Ian is just about to stumble over the finishing line on the next SFX special, after which he plans to hibernate… at least, until Russell starts prodding him with a stick and asking where that Being Human feature and reviews section are. You’ll be able to read a full breakdown of all its contents on the website soonish (probably Tuesday)! He’d also like to remind you that should you like a. bad puns and b. swearing he is still on the hunt for more Twitter followers!

Tickets for this week’s Harry Potter screening – shiny, not-so-happy people.

Russell’s been sketching cover ideas for the next special but one, possibly inspired by the absinth he’s been quaffing (not in the office) that he got in Prague. He’s also watched the Sarah Jane Adventures finale and declared it “the best Sarah Jane story ever”. Intriguing… Rich on the other hand has just got off the phone from interviewing a former Star Trek star about an upcoming British TV appearance, and is currently looking through potential cover art for issue 204. Bet you wish you had his eyes now.

Finally Ade has been working like a Time Lord on speed for the past two weeks and thinks you will all love our next special, on sale 30 November, with some top free gifts!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Kerry is brilliant. Better in a way.”

Whose t-shirt? (t’other week’s answer – it was Russell’s fruit!)

It’s suddenly got awfully nippy outside, but in SFX towers things are heating up with yet another apocalyptic deadline looming on the horizon and the new US TV season sending Spoiler Zone into overdrive after a somewhat emaciated summer for sci-fi on the small screen. The first couple of episodes of The Walking Dead have already done the rounds in the office and, not to pre-empt our review, you’d have to be braindead, or suffer from kinemortophobia (check out issue 202’s Nelson’s Column for more on that…) to miss it. Same goes for The Event which, though superficially similar to last year’s small screen non-event FlashForward, actually has likable characters and real drive. If only we could say the same for No Ordinary Family…

What with the team beavering away on issue 203, sometimes it’s easy to miss the fact our latest issue has arrived on shelves up and down the land. Not this week though, obviously, as we’re talking about it right now! And if we do say so issue 202 is a corker with features on Harry Potter, the second series of Misfits and the mighty He-Man, as well as reviews of Let Me In and that warrior owl movie. For a full rundown hit up this magic link [plug: deactivated].

On Tuesday Nick found himself on set for one of 2011′s most eagerly anticipated films. He’s embargoed up to his eyeballs so can barely talk to us about it, let alone you, faithful reader. But he returned in a state of high excitement (though that may have been the free sweets by the catering truck kicking in – yes, forget the drugs and the deviant sex, we can exclusively reveal that Hollywood productions are powered by pure E numbers). His euphoria was soon replaced by the realisation that he’s been landed with No Ordinary Family for Spoiler Zone. “It’s like writing about polysterene,” he was heard to mutter darkly. Still, he had a grand time at the British International Comics Show in Birmingham last weekend, catching up with sterling SFX blogger Stace and other old chums from the four-colour universe.

Dave G's new Rock Band drum pedal. Talk about metal.

After his off-world philandering last week (otherwise known as set visits) Jordan’s been holed up in the office, hermit-like, since as he attempts to put a dent in his workload. Supernatural’s return to Spoiler Zone bucked his mood up though – even if the first couple episodes were worryingly naff. In other news he was overjoyed to finally receive his finished boxed copy of the Alien Anthology this week and hasn’t stopped drooling since watching Aliens at ear-drum-menacing volume. Deputy Ed Rich, meanwhile, has been learning the ropes in his new position as Dave B’s mini-me, as well as writing about an exciting new British TV show, and looking at some pretty Star Wars pictures in a very shiny book.

“Sleep is for the dead” is Ian’s motto at the moment, since he’s editing the next SFX Collection special at the same time as taking care of the usual nine to five – 11 pages have been laid out so far, and it’s looking smashing. He’s working from home today, typing up an interview with John Ajvide Lindqvist, reading a newly-arrived Book Club piece by Dan Abnett, making a wish list of toys and collectables, and doing some frantic last-minute chasing for the DVD review pages, and he’d like to remind you all to post your questions for Tom Baker, who he’ll be interviewing next week.

“Ah, outside SFX towers today feels like the planet Hoth!” declared Ade upon arrival this morning. He’s also currently busy on issue 203, planning for the SFX Weekender 2, and contemplating the question: is it time to get the gloves, hat and scarf out of retirement? Brr.

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Random quote of the week: “I’ve got no time for Bill Turnbull.”

Make It Stop: Just because it was frosty this morning doesn’t mean it’s alright to play Band Aid in October *stares with unspeakable intent at the marketing bods on the other side of the room*

Whose Dragons? (last week’s answer: they were Ade’s shoes!)

The web’s a funny place. Sometimes you can slave away for hours/days on a feature and barely get noticed, and other times you can spend 15 minutes writing up a tiny brain bubble in internet ink and have tens of thousands of people flooding to your site. It helps if Nathan Fillion tweets a link to your story of course, which is exactly what happened this Monday, the Double Rainbow Firefly star pointing his 648,812 followers towards Tweets Of The Week where we backed his call to star as Nathan Drake in the upcoming Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune adaptation. The site may have temporarily crashed but web supremo Dave Golder couldn’t have been happier. Thanks Captain Mal!

What's the deal postie?

It’s been a bit of a waiting game for most of the team this week as issue 202 seems to have got lost in the post somewhere on its way to SFX Towers, so we’ve been taking our minds off new issue Christmas by checking out the first two episodes of The Walking Dead (which is the cover feature of issue 201, still on sale for another week if you haven’t snapped it up yet). Art bods Catherine and Jon, both give the zombie serial two severed thumbs up, but we’re a smidge disappointed the opening credits aren’t half as good as these fantastic fan made titles.

Ian is still recovering from the stress of trying out an experimental live Twitter Couch Potato on Sunday – it was a bit of a nightmare, since we managed to lock ourselves out of Twitter by posting too much! There’s definitely the germ of a good idea there, though, so we’re planning to try it again in the future, in a slightly different format (and probably with a dedicated Twitter account, so we don’t spam up anyone’s timeline). Right now, he’s looking forward to a four-day weekend – most of it will be spent working on the next SFX special (we never sleep, you know!), but he is going to a Crystal Castles gig on Sunday. And yes, he did mention that just to try and look cool.

Like The Shining, but with fewer psychopaths.

What with spending most of the day on Monday in London to interview Nick Frost and check out a preview of Paul, and all day yesterday on the set of upcoming Douglas Adams adaptation Dirk Gently, Jordan’s rosy cheeks have been a rare sight round the office this week. He quickly regretted wearing jeans and a pair of trainers to the interview at the poshest hotel in London, however, after having the front door opened for him by a dapper fellow in a top hat and tails. Having finally finished his epic Buffy re-watch he’s started on season two of Twin Peaks, which he’s never seen before despite having watched season one half a dozen times. Jordan and Dave G have also been masterminding their plan for this year’s London Expo, where they’ll be manning the SFX stall and running a special version of Blastermind. Pop along and say hello if you’re there.

Rich is getting all nostalgic for a time when he thought The Phantom Menace would be the future of cinema, looking forward to watching Predators on Blu-ray this evening and wondering if he can find any more jobs to do before he gets on with some transcription… (Also, film recommendation – it’s not sci-fi, but The Social Network is ace). Nick meanwhile is off to BICS tomorrow and is frantically printing off maps as his sense of direction is about as proficient as a water-soluble dinghy.

We were also happy to welcome Ade back to SFX towers this week after his recent prang. He’s fighting fit and ready for anything (well, nearly everything) and still smiling from last week’s Doctor Who Live in London, which arrived at just the right time to cheer him up. Ade also wants to say thank you for the get well gifts and messages he received from you all. Three cheers for you lot!

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Random Quote Of The Week: “Has anyone sucked your plunger?”

In The Real World… The Chilean miners rescue was life-affirming and all but we can’t help but wonder the news coverage looked more like this.

Whose Shoes? (last week’s answer: it was Ian’s t-shirt!)

Another month, another shiny new issue off to the printers, and as always not without a few last minute obstacles to overcome, but even production editor Russell’s absence for the first couple of days this week couldn’t knock us off course. In fact, despite the dire straits we were in two weeks ago the magazine went off a day earlier than last issue. Still about fours hours late mind, but what’s a few minutes between friends?

Workie Roseena Zakria who'll be lending us a hand in the office for the next two weeks

To celebrate, the team painted the town red on Tuesday, which might explain why the office was curiously quiet on Wednesday morning. Even early bird Dave G was nowhere to be seen until “normal” office hours. We also have another reason to celebrate because this week we flew past 10,000 followers on Twitter – hooray for our Twitter army! Global domination just became one step closer. We’re not resting on our laurels, however, as this week social networking gets 5000% better as we bring semi-regular, but universally adored, magazine feature Couch Potato to Twitsville. You can find all the details here, join us!

Speaking of Couch Potato, the team had a good old chortle yesterday afternoon looking at the latest batch of pictures from the session held at Russell’s pad recently. The common theme throughout: cereal. Confused? It’ll all make sense when issue 203 hits shelves on 17 November.

The highlight of Ian’s week thus far has been a very enjoyable hour-and-a-quarter chat with the inimitable Katy Manning (aka Doctor Who’s Jo Grant), who proved not only to be very funny and infectiously enthusiastic, but also very sharp. And yes, we did talk about the nudey pics in Girls Illustrated (don’t worry, this link IS safe for work – you’ll see)…

Rich and Catherine, meanwhile, have seen the best film of the year. It’s 25 years old, but Back To The Future will not be beaten. The great thing is, Rich was even spotting stuff he’d never seen before. Otherwise, he’s also working his little socks off building the news for 203 and loving We Love Sci-Fi. Nick has returned from his holiday full of beans – or rather, strange olive-shaped chocolate things which he brought back for the team, but no-one seems to like except Jon and Jordan. They’re not complaining.

The Tube strike may have postponed his trip but Jordan finally made it down to the London Film Museum on Tuesday for a sneaky peek at the astonishing Alien Anthology Blu-ray. If that wasn’t geeky enough he almost lost his composure wandering around the museum’s collection of props and costumes from the film, including a full-size Alien queen, pulse rifle and facehugger. He’ll have a full report tomorrow, or maybe later today –  we like to keep you on your toes.

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Random quote of the week: “I had a bottle thrown at me once. They thought I was the lesbian I was living with at the time.”

Whose t-shirt? (Last week’s answer: it was Rich’s shirt!)

As much as we’d like to think it’s all fun and games in the SFX office, sometimes there’s no other option but to put our heads down and get some work done. And this has been one of those weeks with the team clicking, interviewing and touch typing themselves into an early grave. Ok maybe things aren’t quite that bad, but we have a flair for the dramatic.

While issue 202 slowly takes form in SFX Towers then, the rest of the world is getting its first glimpse of our spectacular Joss Whedon special, which goes on sale today. You can find out all the goodies contained in this cave of wonders here, and judging by the response we’ve had already you’d be wise to snatch one up (not literally of course, stealing is wrong, m’kay?) before they’re dust.

Dave B’s big London meeting with the publishing director got cancelled at the last minute, so he gets to stay here, finish off the mag and sort through applications for the new Editorial Assistant. Nick meanwhile is still living the good life on the Cote d’Azur, we wonder how many (shaken, not stirred) Martinis he’s sipped by now?

These are magic glasses - they make everything look 3D, and also magically cause migraines.

Ian is currently at home beavering away on a feature on forthcoming Let The Right One In remake Let Me In, after spending what seemed like about two years transcribing his interview with director Matt Reeves. Boy, that guy can talk! Ian clocked him at about 185 words per minute, and found that it helped to slow the sound file down to about 94%… He’s also seen the film, by the way. Nutshell verdict: not quite a masterpiece like the original, but still an honest, caring, respectful adaptation. Ian also finally committed the email faux pas he’s expected for years now after sending details of his completed review pages not to production editor Russell Lewin, but to Russell T Davies instead. Fortunately Russell T (currently working away on Torchwood: The New World) saw the funny side, Russell L not so much as he wanted to know what the jimmy was going on with reviews.

Rich hasn’t forgotten about the important things in life, namely getting warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia watching the awesome extras on the new Back To The Future Blu-ray. He also can’t wait to see the original movie on the big screen next week (he says he’s more excited about seeing it than pretty much any other movie this year). Jordan’s also had his nostalgia buttons pushed this week by the Alien Anthology Blu-ray, which somehow manages to cram even more essential stuff onto the six discs than the superlative Quadrilogy DVD. He’s more than a little disappointed that “Quadrilogy” never became a proper word though.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “This is going to be a week where SFX is up in your face.”

Random plea of the week: Did you know our Twitter feed now has 9,904 followers – that’s almost 10,000! We’ll give you all a big hug* if you recommend us to a friend and push us over 10k (*note: all hugs will be metaphorical embraces, unless you happen to see us on the street)

Whose T-shirt? (last week’s answer – they were Dave Golder’s camo converse. Bet you couldn’t spot them in front of his satchel, eh? We’re crafty like that)

The champagne we won in Future Publishing's excellence awards this month.

In the SFX Office it never rains, it pours, so it’s no surprise that when one member of the team decides to go on their hols, two more decide to join in the party. As sod’s law would have it of course multiple absences in SFX Towers can mean only one thing, we’re a smidge behind on issue 202 with precisely three finished pages in the can and a week to go. If you could see the look on production editor Russell’s face right now…

One of the absentees, Rich, is recovering in France after dedicating the past few months of his life to birthing his very own Joss Whedon special (it’s not as dirty as it sounds). The double mag goes on sale next Thursday and features all new interviews and features with the Wheonverse’s biggest icons including Nathan Fillion, Anthony Head, Eliza Dushku and 14-pages dedicated to our chat with the man himself. And that’s not all because also in the spiffing wallet is a whole separate magazine brimming with a complete TV and movie guide to the works of Whedon,  even Alien Resurrection. The things we put ourselves through for you.

Deputy art ed Catherine has been living the good life in Greece’s sunny climes, but is back in the UK now and off for a trip to Alton Towers (jammy so-and-so). Dave B meanwhile is spending his time off over the border in North Wales, stopping in the original Village, Portmeirion, on the way. That still hasn’t prevented him sending the team work-related emails on a regular basis, however. He might not be able to perform all his Editor-In-Chief duties, but he can at least dispatch Rover to bring back a fleeing Number Six.

The team were shocked this morning to find that early-bird Dave G wasn’t in the office beavering away on his regular morning sfx.co.uk updates. Rumours circulating round the office included everything from a wonky alarm clock to alien abduction, that is until he strolled in half and hour later and told us about the argument he’d been having with a lorry driver who blocked his car in his driveway. You won’t like Dave G when he’s angry.

What with living in Bristol, Ian was very excited to discovered that Doctor Who was filming there earlier this week for the first time ever (hey, Cardiff stole Being Human from us, so it’s only right!), 15 minutes down the road from where he lives, so he ambled along to take a quick look. As expected, there was pretty much nothing to see… When you get invited on set in an official capacity they always carefully select days when there is really cool stuff to watch, so we’re always happy to wait for those! But it was kind of fun to be on the other side of the fence with the denizens of Gallifrey Base, and his girlfriend was very excited to get a glimpse of Karen Gillan, which was the main reason for heading down – you can’t take your partner along on official set visits! His other highlight of the week was a 45-minute phone interview with Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist on Monday morning – he’s the author of the book Let The Right One In, and has a new book called Harbour (out on 30 September). Did you know that he used to be a stand-up comic, and a street magician? He also really, really knows his Morrissey B-sides, and is a big fan of Clive Barker. Look out for the interview in issue 202. Ian’s also been busily commissioning stuff for another SFX special (the one after the Joss Whedon special). Can’t tell you what it’s about yet, but it’s all shaping up very well.

Regular readers will be delighted to hear that last night Jon, Jordan and Nick headed to Russell’s house to do a Couch Potato for issue 203. We’ll keep the subject of our evening’s viewing secret for now, but we can reveal some juicy secrets, such as Russell’s 500-strong Spider-Man comics collection and his other collection of breakfast cereals (the loon). The less said about the warped candles, upside down mirror and bar of soap on the conservatory roof the better. By the end of the day much tea had been consumed (but not green tea as Jordan and Nick turned their noses up at it), different discs had been spun (everything from The Hurt Locker to ‘70s sitcom Not On Your Nellie which Jordan watched in utter perplexity) and banter exchanged. Look out for it in a couple of months in the mag.

In sports news, Russell grabbed a brace in a fantastic 6-2 victory in the Future Cup on Monday night. Then sneaked a swim at the pool.

Nick is rushing to complete this month’s Development Hell before fleeing to France for his first holiday of the year. He’s heading to the Cote d’Azur, and hopes to live out all of his Roger Moore in The Persuaders fantasies. If that fails he’ll head to Pinewood and fake it with rear projection and stock footage. In other news he’s feeling a little guilty for being quite so dismissive of Russell’s attempt at a cup of tea at yesterday’s Couch Potato. But it did look like liquidised moss.

Jordan on the other hands has no regrets at refusing the revolting cuppa, though he did enjoy the proper brew Russell made him after. Inbetween watching stuff for the mag (and new episodes of Chuck of course) Jordan has been making his way through an epic Buffy rewatch and watched “Once More With Feeling” for the first time in years this weekend. He’d forgotten just how much he loves that episode, but now worries that means he’s only one step away from finding out he’s a Gleek.

Ade is mega busy with the next edition and has no time for mobile phone companies calling to sell him an upgrade. He couldn’t resist playing the Star Wars phone game where you quote a line, so imagine the jolly female’s reply when she heard this after  asking if he had time to talk: “Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”  Ha…. She didn’t want to talk anymore. How Strange!

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Random quote of the week: “It looks a bit like John Barrowman’s Christmas tree…”

Whose shoes? (Last week’s answer: it was Ian’s tie! And if you don’t believe us, the proof can be found above)

Being a journalist isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. Anyone who’s done time on a local paper will be able to regale you with tales of irate pensioners and the time they had to wade through a field of viscous cow deposits, but for many there’s nothing worse than a mind-numbing meeting. Luckily in SFX Towers, to be precise one floor down in the luxurious, space-age boardroom (it has a vidscreen for conference calls and everything!), even the meetings are fun, as the team discovered last Friday – putting our noggins together for six hours to decide the future shape of SFX.

Jordan (left) and Rich doing their redesign research

The details are top secret of course but you might be happy to know there were bagels involved. And flapjacks. And brownies as every page, paragraph and boxout to feature regularly in the magazine came in for some (constructive) criticism. It’s the first step in a larger process with some big changes to come, just don’t expect to see much before the new year. We even put the question to our humble friends on Facebook, who responded in their dozens. Though we can tell you now those asking for less Doctor Who coverage are on to a loser.

As if that wasn’t enough creative mass meetings for one week (hmm, weren’t we saying the same thing last time we spoke?) last night Dave G, Dave B, Nick, Russell and Jordan moseyed on down to the pub in order to generate feature ideas for the website. It was work, honest! We got lots of great ideas out of it. Although in the cold light of day, ideas like “Up the Artoo” don’t seem quite as sparkling…

On Tuesday the SFX office took delivery of the latest issue of Comic Heroes (on sale today!), but upon opening the boxes like little giddy kiddies at Christmas, we were taken aback by the ghastly undead monstrosity staring back at us. Fear not, SFX readers haven’t taken to sending in rotting corpses (yet), it was the fantastic Walking Dead cover art gracing the magazine’s sleeve this issue. And it’s not the only time this month team SFX will have to brace themselves for a face full of braaaains, because as regular readers of FROM THE SFX OFFICE know, SFX 201 also has an image of The Walking Dead on its cover – this one from the live-action TV show. Can you tell we’re a little excited about it? This also means that it’s your last chance till Wednesday to grab a copy (or two) of  our anniversary SFX issue 200, don’t miss it!

Rich is in a euphoric state having finished his Joss Whedon special, start saving those pennies Whedonites. Now there’s just SFX 202 to think about. Meanwhile it’s Ian’s first day back in the office after a week’s holiday in New York, so he’s more than a little dazed and confused, and glancing wearily from a four-foot high mail pile to an inbox crammed with hundreds of unread emails. Favourite thing in the Big Apple? The Manhattan skyline, as seen at night from Governor’s Island (on 9/11). But the Star Wars-themed Jesus dress-up fridge magnets he found in a bookstore in Williamsburg came a close second!

Jordan and Dave G were both left a little nonplussed by this week’s True Blood season three finale and have come to the conclusion that, fantastic as it is, the show can’t do season finale’s for toffee. Whatever that means. Jordan’s also in a state of denial this week, refusing to watch the last episode of the brilliant Arrested Development in the vein hope they’ll finally announce that movie. He’s also very excited that the HD Ico/Shadow Of The Colossus collection has finally been confirmed for release having missed the pair first time round on PS2.

Cupcakes to celebrate Mario's 25th birthday. Thanks Nintendo!

Russell’s football team scraped a 3-2 victory on Monday and the next day he celebrated by finally binning the grotesque chewing gum alien he’d been “developing” for the past several weeks. The office breathed a sigh of relief. Russell’s also been watching tons of The Avengers series five for review and was amused to listen to the commentary on the episode “Epic”, featuring that ultimate luvvie Peter Wyngarde. “He keeps telling these x-rated luvvie anecdotes about people like Noel Coward and Lucille Ball and they keep having to bleep him out! It’s hysterical.”

Ade is wearing his Doctor Who Fez and bowtie today (no, not really folks) but just like Worzel Gummidge who used to swap heads, has his Timelord nut on. Oooooh, if you could only see what he can see!

In breaking news this week’s FROM THE OFFICE was rudely interrupted by a fire alarm in SFX towers. Luckily no-one perished as the flames licked the stairs on our descent. That or it was just a false alarm, we weren’t really playing attention, just narked our flow had been interrupted. As if being a journalist wasn’t hard enough.

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Random quote of the week: “I’d rather chop my knees off with an axe”

Whose tie? (last week’s answer: they were Jon’s spotless kicks!)

There aren’t many things better in SFX Towers than feeling the weight of the world drop off our shoulders after punching “send” on the latest issue. Except of course suddenly realising we’re already a week behind on issue 202 and collectively amble into the office like the walking dead.

It’s rather apt then that the cover of our latest issue should feature a gruesome image from the most anticipated comic-book adaptation of the year. Nope, it’s not Jonah Hex (which, despite being less than 80 minutes, managed to send Jordan asleep earlier this week) but Frank Darabont’s ace-looking adaptation of The Walking Dead! Like some kind of zombie Light Brigade our complete guide to the show leads the charge in our massive 2011 TV preview issue featuring exclusive news on Fringe, Supernatural, Being Human, Smallville and Matt Smith’s stint on The Sarah Jane Adventures. Out 22 September it’s worth rising from the grave for, particularly as it almost sent a couple on the team to an early one.

Any Walking Dead fans might also want to check out the massive interviews with comic creators Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard in Comic Heroes issue 3, out 16 September. Check back next week for the first images.

Cupcakes for the team provided by the rather lovely Julie and Chloe from Tor

With half of team SFX working their little socks off till the wee hours in the first half of the week then, our regular Monday flatplan meeting (where the section eds go through each page and the rest of us make up excuses about why we still haven’t finished our work) had to be postponed till today. Each week it takes about an hour, but that’s small fry compared to the marathon six-hour session we’ll be having tomorrow ahead of our post-200 redesign. Brace yourself for a bigger, better, swankier-looking SFX in the near future.

As if that wasn’t enough meetings for one week, Dave B and Nick are also meeting with the fine publishing folk from Tor today for a spot of lunch and a chat about books. Our long-serving ads manager Ade meanwhile is mega chuffed at receiving an invite to the forthcoming Doctor Who Monsters tour in London, and more tickets yesterday to Madam Tussauds Marvel Waxworks Exhibition. Jammy so and so.

Ian's pile of parcels after three days, imagine what it'll look like in a week!

Russell’s been beavering away on a future Anatomy Of A Classic on one of his favourite films, The Truman Show. It gives him the excuse to watch and rewatch and rewatch his hero Jim Carrey in action. In other news Ian’s taking advantage of the short-lived post-deadline relief by taking a trip to New York! Today he’s scaling the Empire State Building, no doubt hoping to spot a giant ape or two. Rich is still spending his every waking minute (and a more than a few sleeping ones) on his Joss Whedon special and Jordan went to Bath’s Little Cinema for the first time this week. He was very impressed by the cozy seating and free magazines in the loo. Much like in the SFX office then.

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Random Quote Of The Week: “The extra inches make all the difference.”

Random discussion of the week: Russell’s declaration that he owns not one but two sheds left the rest of the team slightly bewildered as to why. Ian suggested the spare one was for storing dead bodies. The real reason Russell declared somewhat menacingly: “storing technology I no longer need.”

Whose shoes? (last week’s answer: it was Rich’s T-shirt!)

Regular FROM THE OFFICE readers will already be well aware, but life behind-the-scenes of a monthly magazine can be a strange existence. No it’s not because team mates create hermaphrodite aliens stuck to post-it notes out of their used chewing gum and then flaunt it round the office in the manner of a psychopath proud parent; a magazine’s production cycle can really mess with your internal clock.

Here's Jonny!

Take for example our current conundrum – as the SFX community and our own website talk up our magnificent, jam-packed issue 200 the office hive mind is currently beavering away on issue 201, veering perilously close to deadline. In fact some of us have started work on issue 202. Even the Doctor would have a tough time getting his head round this one.

Timey-wimey madness aside, after last week’s frivolity it’s been back to business as usual in SFX towers. Despite the deadline, Dave’s off to London today to have lunch with Simon and Lynsey from Transworld (Terry Pratchett’s publishers), no doubt to come up with some schemes for the Weekender. He shall be proofing pages on the train, if that makes everybody feel better. This time of year also marks the start of annual appraisals at Future Publishing (well, we say the start the deadline was the end of August originally, err…) and Dave’s got a long couple of weeks ahead of him, sitting down for an hour with every team member to chat about their work over the past 12 months. It’s like Parents Evening but without mum and dad and the chance you might get fired at the end of it. No wonder everyone’s been so nice to Dave of late.

Rich is still putting in silly hours to make his super-looking Joss Whedon Special worthy of a magazine dedicated to the big man. FROM THE OFFICE has had a sneak peek and take it from us you won’t be disappointed. After Rich ventured north of the border to Edinburgh Fringe a couple of weeks ago, last weekend it was Dave B’s turn to put on his best Rab C Nesbitt for the Edinburgh International TV Festival. In case you’ve been imprisoned in a Pandorica since Sunday the big news from the festival was that Doctor Who season six will be broadcast in two halves to be shown in the Spring and Autumn – a move which earned the Team SFX seal of approval, not least because we can now take summer holidays without fear of missing an episode.

Ian has spent much of the week struggling to concentrate, as ideas for the SFX-special-after-next (which he’ll be editing) keep bubbling up in his brain. Trust us, it’s gonna be great! Today he’s at home, listening to The Drums as he beavers away on reviews of Forbidden Planet, [REC] 2 and Fringe. He’s also excited about Robin Of Sherlock, the time-travel movie he accidentally invented by getting his words mixed up, in which Sherlock Holmes is flung back into medieval times by HG Wells’s time machine. Come on, that’s a winning pitch right there, surely?

A sneak peek at one of next issue's top compos

SPORTS FLASH! Russell played football and although he was on the side that lost heavily managed to score three of his team’s goals. And has the bruises to prove it. Russell also caught Piranha 3D at the cinema (ten pound bloody fifty!) and declared the nude underwater ballet set to Delibes “a work of genius”. “Strange how Kelly Brook then covers up for the rest of the film,” he pondered. “Maybe it was a contractual thing?” Ade meanwhile is back from a week’s holiday (well a new bathroom kind of holiday anyway) and is reminiscing about the SFX 200th party a week after the morning after. His main thought: he never wants to feel that ill ever again.

After a fortnight of walking round half deaf (an old swimming maladay coming back to haunt him) Jordan made the most of a return to life in stereo last night by watching The Matrix on Blu-ray before tuning into Arrested Development for the first time, if only to stop Catherine and Rich hounding him every time he mentions the fact the complete boxset has been sat on his shelf for about a year. Jordan also made his first trip to Future’s London offices this week where he marvelled at the life-size Big Daddy (from Bioshock) and Lara Croft looming over the cafeteria there. He’s since put in a request to the publishers to have a Big Daddy and/or Link (from Zelda) installed in the SFX offices, but at well over £1000 a pop each he’s not getting his hopes up.

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Office Prank Of The Week: Russell pulled an old trick out of the bag this week (and managed to get himself struck off Dave G’s Christmas card list in the process) by pretending the person Dave had been waiting to interview called while he was in the loo, only to pass a panicked Dave the receiver with nothing but a dial tone on the other end. The old cad.

Office discussion of the week: After Russell discovered a ginormous spider in his house last night (the biggest you’ve ever seen, honest!) Dave B let us in on his tech savvy method of dealing with 8-legged freaks – he takes a picture of them then emails it round to everyone he can think of. Not that that helps in getting rid of the spider.

Whose T-shirt ? (last week’s answer: they were Russell’s shoes!)

There’s a Christmassy feel in the air at SFX Towers and no it’s not the bafflingly premature warbling of Perry Como emanating from the stereo across the room. With Nick, Ian, Jon and Ade absent there’s a feeling this could be the calm before the (snow)storm, and you’d forgive us for mistaking the postie for Old Saint Nick yesterday when he delivered the gift we’ve been waiting for all year. That’s right issue 200 has docked on Starship SFX, we’ve bagged our white whale.

We’ll have a full issue preview up later today but here’s your first look at our jam-packed 200-page anniversary spectacular. Best issue ever? We think so but there is one thing we can guarantee – it’ll take 25% longer to read, or your money back (note: no actual money will be returned under any circumstances). Star Trek 2 is at the head of the fleet but we’re also incredibly proud of our mammoth 33-page feature revealing 200 science-fiction secrets from the likes of Joss Whedon, James Cameron, Stan Lee and Terry Pratchett. It’s taken us the best part of a year to compile, never say we don’t love you guys.

Every issue of SFX is contained on these discs. At least we can find them now Dave G's tidied the shelf.

Elsewhere SFX has been in the news recently. You might have noticed the top 200 SF characters ever poll we’ve been running online over the past few months – well the results of the group stages are in with the “monsters” category getting a mention on the Telegraph website, blastr, Whedonesque and even during Steve Wright’s Wednesday afternoon show on Radio 2. Seems you can’t open a browser without running into SFX (and if sfx.co.uk is your homepage then that’s probably not surprising, and if not what are you waiting for?) Our bid for global multimedia domination continues this evening when SFX overlord-in-chief Dave Bradley takes to the mic for a guest spot on TalkSport at midnight. Fear not he is talking about sci-fi, he hopes. You can listen in to the online feed at www.talksport.co.uk even if you’re not in the UK.

Thanks to absentees, swearing and shouting loudly in the office has been down to almost nil (no Ian) as have terrible retro movie T-shirts (no Nick) and check shirts (no Jon). Dave G has a new hearing aid but we’re not certain that it’s actually working.

With Ian on his way home from an all expenses paid, business class trip to Vancouver (as he has taken to reminding us on a regular basis) Rich has been left to fend on his own on the far side of the office and is full steam ahead on the Joss Whedon special, getting stuck into a bit of HG Wells for a feature in 201 and working his way through the 200 secrets of science fiction in the new issue. See even we’re savouring it, it’s that good.

Jordan can now proudly count himself among the legion of Battlestar Galactica devotees having watched the final episode for the first time last night. A couple of niggling loose ends aside he declared it “the greatest science fiction series ever!” though that might just be the chamalla talking. He’s also relieved to have finally finished the 1500 word feature and 700 word review he’s been writing for issue 201 – on the same film. Doesn’t half mess with your mind that.

A bizarre, copyright flaunting painting Jordan spotted while on his travels in France.

After much deliberation Russell decided against buying an iPhone (“I can’t justify it”) and is instead contenting himself with building a Roswell alien out of used chewing gum. It’s looking good disgusting so far. Pictures when it’s fully formed next week unless common sense gets the better of us before then.

Looking to the future – all the winners of our 200 birthday bash have now been contacted. Sorry if you didn’t win (maybe issue 300 eh?) but for the next best thing why not come to the SFX Weekender 2 next February. Life threatening injuries aside (and no, man flu doesn’t count) we’ll all be there. In fact the two Daves were in a meeting earlier to discuss next year’s SFX Awards. Voting will start in the autumn; look out for details in a future issue of the mag.

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Random quote of the week: “Warehouse 13 was the worst thing to ever happen to Syfy. Great for Spurious Awards though.”

Whose T-shirt (last week’s answer – it was Adrian’s desk!)

The Comic-Con crew are back in town. Yes, the two Daves and Rich have returned from San Diego, bleary-eyed and suffering the effects of jet lag and American food. About the first thing each of them did on getting back, apparently, was ravenously shovel some fruit or vegetables down their gullets having survived for the previous six days on burgers, pretzels and brown things covered in radioactively-glowing cheese – there’s  little else on sale near the convention centre).

But there’s little chance to catch up on our sleep patterns, as there’s still the mammoth issue 200 of SFX to get to the printers in just over a week. Not that those left behind have been slouching (in fact, they’ve done a ton of work), but with over 60 extra pages to fill, it’s all noses to the grindstone, hands to the tiller and backs to the thing that needs backs to get it going. We’ve got a couple of massively ambitious features in the issue, which seemed like great ideas at the time – and will once again seem like great ideas when the mag finally comes back – but which currently feel like the stupidest ideas in publishing since the editor of The Camelot Gazette invented the concept of round table interviews. Rich, especially, has to try and cram five days worth of interviews into one, packed, Comic-Con themed news section. No wonder his keyboard is in meltdown.

In the art corner, Dave B and Jonathan are slaving over the issue 200 cover. Or should we say covers. And no, that doesn’t mean there’ll be multiple covers to choose from (or buy, if you’re a completist)… but we’ll keep the details of exactly what we mean a mystery for the moment. That’s your cue to go, “Oooooohhhhhh!” Which you probably will do again when you see the thing for real. But here’s one clue… There’s something missing. Even for subscribers (who usually have a lot missing from the cover anyway).

Nick may not have jetted to California, but he was having his own special kind of fun. Yesterday he was on set for the filming of the Doctor Who 2010 Christmas special, feeling very seasonal on a blazing hot day in Wales. He refuses to reveal anything about the plot, but there’s definitely a hint of A Christmas Carol about it all. He did admit, though, to queuing next to Karen Gillan at the food wagon. Don’t think she was having the sticky toffee pudding.

Tuesday was a dreaded Heavy Post Day for Ian

Ian is in a good mood after having a very interesting chat with Cloverfield director Matt Reeves last night about Let Me In, his forthcoming remake of Let The Right One In. Those who were in the office to overhear couldn’t help but notice Ian’s attempts to ingratiate himself with Matt by saying things like, “Of course, in the original book there’s a scene where…” and, “When I interviewed Tomas Alfredson, director of the original film…”  Worra show-off.

Dave G, meanwhile, has just issued a massive sigh of relief, and is dancing around the office singing, “I never have to spoiler review any more episodes of Saving Grace ever again! Hurrah! Hurrah! All praise to the Axe! All praise to the Axe!” It’s an annual ritual; you just have to replace the name of the show depending on the year (Flash Gordon, Charmed, etc, etc). Wonder what he’ll be singing in Saving Grace’s place next year? The Cape? No Ordinary Family? Or maybe we won’t have a year to wait if Haven doesn’t improve. Rapidly.

Random quote of the week: “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…”

Random observation of the week: Americans walk really slowly. But there‘s no point overtaking them on the sidewalk. You just get to the next junction first, where you have to wait for the little Walk man to light up, by which time all the ambling pedestrians you’ve just passed catch you up.

Whose T-Shirt? (No answer to last week, as there was nobody here):

(Oh, and in case we ever play Whose Desk? again: the people in the above photo may or may not be at their actual, own desk)

]]> http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/07/29/from-the-sfx-office-21/feed/ 3 http://www.sfx.co.uk/2006/09/22/faq/ http://www.sfx.co.uk/2006/09/22/faq/#comments Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:00:00 +0000 sfx http://www.sfx.co.uk/?p=21530 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Last updated: 1 November 2011

1. What is SFX?
SFX is the world’s number one science fiction and fantasy magazine. It’s been running since 1995, and covers all aspects of SF and fantasy, including TV, films, DVDs, books, comics, games, collectables and more. It’s also a website (this one!), an app, a live event and more. If you’re into sci-fi, horror or fantasy, you should read/visit/attend SFX. The core team are based in Britain, although we have writers and readers all over the world, and it’s available internationally including the US and Canada – not to mention digital versions (Apple devices or Zinio). It’s published by Future and is the best selling magazine of its type, the market leader in the genre magazine arena.

2. How often do you come out?
Every four weeks. That means there are 13 regular issues of SFX a year. Outside the usual SFX schedule, we also publish a regular special edition (SFX Collections) which comes out six times a year and focuses on a single topic. See the website for details of other forthcoming projects. Six times a year you can also read our spin-off sister title, Comic Heroes. And of course you can get these digitally (see links above).

3. How many copies do you sell?
The ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) provides an official yearly circulation figure for every magazine signed up. Our latest print ABC figure is 31,360, making us the best selling magazine of our kind. Beware of other magazines’ claims when not supported by an officially audited number – if you’re thinking of advertising with them, ask them why they haven’t revealed an ABC figure.

4. What does “SFX” stand for?
It’s not really an acronym, although the “SF” bit obviously implies “science fiction”. The “X” bit? Er… Xtra? Xtreme? Xplosion?! Take your pick. It certainly doesn’t mean we’re a special FX magazine. We’re purely a sci-fi, fantasy and horror mag, so – PR folk please note – we don’t run features on films like Titanic or Poseidon, even though they’re heavy on effects.

5. So what exactly do you mean by “science fiction and fantasy”?
A good question, because our definition of “fantasy” is pretty broad. For us, The Wizard Of Oz is a fantasy film. So is Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. We cover horror films, if they have a supernatural or fantastical element (ghosts, zombies, etc) – but not if they’re just serial killer thrillers. We cover Lost and Alias because these universes have fantastical elements, but not 24 or The Saint. Where do 300 or James Bond fit in? Ultimately, it comes down to a gut feeling – we all know when something feels SFXy.

6. When does the next issue go on sale?
In-mag, this date can always be found on the opening Ed Zone page of the mag, the Next Month column on Development Hell, on the “We Love SF” page at the back of the current issue; or it should be at the bottom of the website’s details of the latest issue.

7. My local newsagent doesn’t stock SFX. Where can I buy it?
You can buy SFX wherever magazines are sold, including your nearest supermarket and WH Smith. Comic Heroes and the SFX Collections are usually best found in WH Smith. You could always simply ask your local newsagent to order it in for you. Alternately, you can order it online via www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/sfx, or call our customer services team on 0844 848 2852. And don’t forget you can get it digitally, downloaded to your Apple device or Android/PC via Zinio.

8. How do I subscribe to SFX?
Subscribe online here, or call 0844 848 2852. You’ll save cash and there might be a special offer running too – this is usually described in the pages of the latest issue. If you’re in the US or Canada, click through instead to www.imsnews.com/sfx to get prices and information for your country. There are digital subscription offers too (see links above).

9. I don’t live in the UK. Where can I buy SFX?
SFX is exported to many countries, including America and Australia. The best place to find it is in bookstores, particularly Barnes and Noble, or Borders. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the magazine online (see the question above) or order it by calling UK (+44) 844 848 2852 . We are now able to provide prices in dollars for North American customers. And there’s digital, too, for your iPad or Android device.

10. I’m a subscriber and the latest issue hasn’t turned up – what do I do?
Regrettably, the editorial team is unable to assist with queries of this nature. Please contact our customer services department by phoning 0844 848 2852, or by emailing katy.robinson@futurenet.com. There’s a thread on our forum too where subscribers can compare notes with each other.

11. You’re giving a free gift to new subscribers, but I’m already a subscriber. Can I get the free gift?
You know how these offers work – you see it all the time with mortgages and sale items in shops. Sorry you missed out, but you probably got a great offer when you subscribed originally. If we have enough stock, we may be able to offer the current promotion to existing subscribers who renew – use one of the customer service contacts above to discuss your request. We are planning to arrange some special offers, discounts and gifts for existing subscribers – watch this space.

12. Where can I buy back issues of SFX?
Our customer services people (0844 848 2852) keep copies of the three most recent issues of the mag, and you can also buy them online here. If you’re looking for an issue older than that, you’ll have to try and track down a second-hand copy on your own. Unsold copies of the mag are recycled and pulped (standard practice in publishing). We have started to make some of our back issues available for the iPad and the text of certain articles available for Kindle users.

13. Can I buy SFX merchandise, like t-shirts?
Yes indeed, over at our new official store. As well as a range of SFX t-shirts, we also offer TV and movie-themed clothing and other collectable items. Visit www.sfxmerch.co.uk.

14. How do I contact you?
The website has details for the editorial team and our advertising manager. If in doubt, the communal mag email is sfx@futurenet.com, which is where you should send letters for our Post Apocalypse page. We regret we are unable to respond personally to most correspondence. Here are some other contact email addresses you might want to know:
Questions for our SFXperts page: sfxperts@futurenet.com
Got an event you want to put on our calendar? sfxevents@futurenet.com
Subscription queries: sfx@subscription.co.uk

15. I’ve got a sci-fi related question I want to ask you. Where do I send it to?
See answer above – you can email sfxperts@futurenet.com or write to Ask The SFXperts, SFX, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. Sorry again, we can’t promise to answer your question (we simply may not know the answer!), or to reply personally.

16. I’m a publicist – who should I send press releases to?
All our details, including what areas we are each responsible for, can be found on the contacts page on the website. If it’s news, it’s Richard Edwards. If it’s an interview/set visit opportunity, then it’s Nick Setchfield. If it’s ready for review, then it’s Ian Berriman. If it relates to the website it’s Dave Golder. Competitions are best placed with Jordan Farley. If it’s important strategic stuff that affects the whole magazine, or its cover and free gifts, then it’s editor-in-chief Dave Bradley you want. Comic Heroes is Mr Jes Bickham. If in doubt, add sfx@futurenet.com to your database.

17. Can I book an advert in SFX?
Hell yes! Whether it’s a full page display ad or a titchy classified, you can find out our rates by contacting Adrian Hill – email adrian.hill@futurenet.com or phone him on 01225 442 244.

18. Didn’t you used to do free reader ads in the mag?
Yes we did for many years, but the number we received diminished as people turned to online services like eBay, Twitter, Match.com, Facebook or even our own forum to swap things, find bargains or meet people. You are still very welcome to write a letter to the magazine’s Post Apocalypse pages if you have something, like a fan event, to promote. We still plug fanzines, amateur websites, short films and self-published books in our letters pages so keep contacting us about those.

19. What are your rules about entering competitions?
Our competitions can now be entered online, or by SMS. Future Publishing has a set of standard terms and conditions for online entry: check ‘em out here. If you are entering a compo in the mag via SMS, please read the small print on the relevant page. We are unable to accept entries by post.

20. I won a competition but I haven’t received my prize yet – what do I do?
Our staff writer Jordan Farley is the contact for all compos queries. Ring SFX on 01225 442244 or email jordan.farley@futurenet.com.

21. I won a free book for having a letter printed, but I haven’t received it yet – what do I do?
Contact the member of the editorial team who compiled that issue’s letters page. Tell them your address, and which issue your letter was printed in (if you can’t remember, contact sfx@futurenet.com and give us much information as you can). Books are sent out directly by the publishers Black Library, not from the SFX office, but we will pass your details on.

22. Will you print this feature/review/news story I’ve written?
Short answer: probably not. Sorry, we do not accept speculative submissions. We write as much of the magazine as possible in-house. In nearly all cases, reviews and features not written by the team are specially commissioned from a pool of regular freelancers, and we’re not actively seeking more contributors just now. Feel free to email us a CV and samples of your work for consideration (Word documents are best), but unless you have some clear access or expertise we currently lack we can’t promise to commission you. Here is a little advice on submitting samples.

23. How do I get a job on SFX?
Unfortunately job opportunities on SFX are very few and far between – people generally stay on the mag for a long time, because it’s a fun job! There are other opportunities within our parent company, however.

24. Have you got any advice on becoming a sci-fi journalist?
Our first advice would be: just aim to be a journalist! There are few professional science fiction magazines in the world, so there’s a lot of competition for staff jobs. Most of the writing team on SFX worked on a variety of other publications first, so why not work for a local paper or something, and work your way into a specialist area you love?

Secondly: try and get work experience at your local newspaper, free magazine or TV station. This can be a very good way of getting your foot in the door in the media. If you make a good impression you might get some freelance work out of it; if you’re really lucky you might be in the right place at the right time when a vacancy opens up. We do sometimes take people on for work experience on SFX – contact the team (above) if you’d like to find out more.

Our third piece of advice for would-be journos is: write! Write lots! Then write even more! Good writing requires talent, but it’s also a skill you can get better at through practice. So write for a fanzine or a website – or start your own! Even just putting together a regular diary or blog can improve your writing. If you contribute to forums and blogs, that could raise your profile too, and you may hear about opportunities.

Finally: when you’re contacting a prospective employer asking for work, make sure your letter/email isn’t full of spelling mistakes and basic grammatical errors. You’d be surprised how many flawed applications we receive – make sure yours isn’t one of them.

25. Can I do work experience on SFX?
There are sometimes opportunities to gain work experience with the SFX team, although we only have a few slots per year, and placements typically last only a week. Please contact the editorial team (see above) to find out if any slots are available.

26. Can I send you my comic strip/short story/poetry?
No thanks. Unfortunately we’re not looking to run any cartoons, comic strips, poetry or short stories in the mag at the moment.

27. If I send you the manuscript of my novel can you help me get it published? If I send you my movie screenplay can you help me get it made?
Sorry, but we can’t help – we’re in the magazine publishing business, not the business of publishing books or making movies. Producing a magazine and website takes up all our time, so sadly we don’t have the spare time to read people’s work and offer advice. And we can’t help you become an actor or an extra either.

28. I would like to offer you an item for review: what is the correct formal procedure?
Simple. Post it to our reviews editor, Ian Berriman at: SFX, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW. Then cross your fingers.

29. Will you review my self-published novel?
‘Fraid not. We receive great mountains of books for review (last time we counted, it was about 80 a month), far more than we can possibly cover in the available space. It’s hard for us to  justify reviewing a book self-published using Lulu or a vanity press rather than a book by a major SF imprint that will be available in stores nationwide. Occasionally we are able to plug independently published books in our letters pages (see point 18 above) but generally we don’t review them. Sorry.

30. Will you review my fanzine?
Maybe – we try to recommend one a month in our Your ‘Zines slot (now appearing on our Post Apocalypse page). Send samples to jordan.farley@futurenet.com or Your ‘Zines, SFX, Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath BA1 2BW. See point 18 above.

31. I’ve made a short film/put on an amateur play! Will you write a feature about it? I’ll give you an exclusive and everything!
We’re very impressed by people’s enthusiasm, but there is so much to write about and limited space in the mag, so we have to be very choosy. We often have to turn away giant multinational companies with their million-dollar projects, so please don’t be shocked if we decline this opportunity. However, we do try to blog about exciting fan projects from time to time and there is a chance we could do a small piece in the letters pages of the mag – if you’ve got something interesting coming up, email sfx@futurenet.co.uk about it (see point 18 above).

32. Can you give me the home address of my favourite actor?
No. We don’t know them all, and even the ones we do know personally would not thank us for sharing their private details. We correspond with most actors via their agents and PR representatives, and so should you. If you want to send someone a fan letter, you need to write to them via their agent. If they’re a British actor, try using the Spotlight website to find out who their agent is.

33. Why do you always cover up the “F” in “SFX” on the cover? It makes it look like I’m buying a magazine called “SEX“!
It’s funny isn’t it? But it doesn’t happen all the time. We don’t select or reject cover images based on whether or not they’ll cover up the F – you’ll find a number of issues where our logo isn’t covered up. Look at any magazine and you’ll see that sometimes, to create a design with impact, the main image stands out in front of the magazine’s logo. This is known as “crashing the logo”. It’s just standard magazine craft and although it makes us chuckle sometimes, it’s not an intentional attempt to make you look like a perv.

34. On the letters page every issue, there’s always a little quote at the bottom of the list of contact details – what do they mean?
These are funny or stupid things said by members of the team during the course of making the issue. (Our jargon for that list of contact details is “flannel panel”, fact fans).

35. What do the star ratings on your reviews mean?
Our star ratings roughly translate as:
Five stars=excellent
Four stars=good
Three stars=average
Two stars=poor
One star=awful
And no, we’re not going to bring back the A+ to E- rating system the mag had many years ago.

36. Why didn’t you review Monkey Tennis III until after it had been released?
We do our very best to run advance reviews, but it’s not always possible. Every issue of SFX goes to the printers way before it hits the shops. This means that to review a film before it goes on general release, we need to see it weeks in advance. Unfortunately, sometimes film screenings take place as late as a couple of days before the film goes on general release (often when the film is a bit of a stinker…). In these situations, we try to make the reviews available online as soon as possible.

37. Got any freebies? Come on, you must have some of those badges left over…
Sorry, we don’t have any left-over cover gifts lying around. They’re stored in a warehouse in Market Harborough somewhere, not in the editorial office. So trying to blag off us is unlikely to be productive. If you want to buy an SFX t-shirt like you’ve seen at the conventions click here.

38. Can you turn off the ads on your website? They’re really annoying!
‘Fraid not! Ads provide valuable support to us and are one of the reasons we are able to maintain a website at all. You may find that there are useful software solutions if this is something that really bothers you. We’re grateful to our sponsors for supporting SFX – gazing at their ads is a small price to pay for all the content we upload for you every day, isn’t it?

39. What do those Spoiler Threat levels in your magazine’s news section mean?
Spoilers can be tricky things to pin down, because everybody seems to be watching TV at different speeds these days. So in order to make sure that everyone can read news stories in SFX without fear of having their favourite show ruined, we’re classifying news stories according to the potential spoiler damage they’re likely to cause. Every TV-related news story comes with an exclusive SPOILER THREAT rating. We’ve sifted through the facts to decide whether the information contained wherein is safe, a bit risky or downright dangerous. No other mag cares more about ensuring you stay spoiler free! The ratings work as follows:
GREEN: SAFE FOR ALL VIEWERS
Anything with a green rating will be spoiler free for anyone watching at the pace of UK terrestrial analogue TV (though if you’re waiting for the DVD, we still advise caution).
AMBER: SAFE FOR MULTI-CHANNEL VIEWERS
Anything in a story rated amber will not be spoilery to anyone watching at the pace of UK satellite, cable or digital TV.
RED: NOT SAFE FOR UK VIEWERS
Beware! You might find spoiler information in here about shows that are yet to air in the UK (although they may have been broadcast in the US). You have been warned…

40. Who are those bloggers spouting opinions on the SFX site?
Back at the start of 2009 we invited readers of the site, forum and magazine to get in touch if they’d like to be official SFX bloggers. Out of all those who submitted contributions, we chose 12 people, and they’ve now begun regularly posting on the main SFX website. They will be contributing thoughts about SF, fantasy and horror in all its forms, giving their own personal opinions on the hot topics and leading discussions and debates on the site – join in!

41. You made a mistake in your mag! Can I point it out?
Sure, as long as it’s not just a typo. Mis-typed words or commas in the wrong place just happen sometimes and pointing them out doesn’t make it less likely to happen in future. However, if you’ve spotted a genuine factual error or gap in our knowledge, then please proceed to our buzzing SFX forum, where you can share your observation with everybody. Just don’t expect to win anything…