John Scalzi has been teasing his readers of his blog, Whatever, with 'That Super Secret Thing that I Can't Tell You About' for a while now, and on Wednesday he revealed it: He's written a relaunch/reboot of H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy books - or at least, of the first book.

His Announcement (which is in question and answer format) reads in part:

Copied from AussieCon 4's site

864 Total Ballots Cast

BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots)

For our April program, we welcome J Alan Erwine—writer, editor, game designer and imminent groom.

J has sold more than thirty short stories to various small press publishers. Eventually J became an editor with ProMart, then with their successor company, Sam’s Dot Publishing, where he continues to work today. J also spends most of his time working as a freelance writer and editor.

For our March program, we welcome New York Times best-selling author Carrie Vaughn. The seventh book in her popular Kitty Norville series, Kitty’s House of Horrors, was released in January. Her first young adult novel, Voices of Dragons, will be released this month. In addition to her always-worth-reading prose, if you’ve seen Carrie and the Midnight Hour program at MileHiCon (and you really should have!), you know what an entertaining speaker she is. This is definitely a program not to miss!

Check out the details at http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100121-24721.html:

"The Complete Metropolis" will be held at the Deutsche Kinemathek museum for film and television at Potsdamer Platz, where many of the Berlinale red carpet events take place.

"It will be sort of a Making Of," said curator Kristina Jaspers.

From the MileHiCon mailing list, we get this news:

Author Rachel Caine has just accepted our invitation to be one of our Guests Of Honor at MileHiCon42 in 2010!

She is the author of more than twenty-five novels, including the popular Weather Warden series, the NY-Times bestselling Morganville Vampires series, the Red Letter Days series, and the Outcast Season series.

Check out her website at http://www.rachelcaine.com for more info on her books!

Picked up a post from Charles Stross at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/2009-hugo-nomination..., which discusses the fact that Hugo Nominations are now open for the 2009 Hugo awards.

Dan O'Bannon, author of the scripts for Alien, Total Recall, and director of Return of the Living Dead and The Resurrected, has died at 63.

Ah, and check out this lovely rememberance of Dan O'Bannon's work and life.

A bit of news reported on Tor.com:

On December 11, 1929, the world’s first club devoted to science fiction met for the first time. They called themselves the Scienceers. Years later, in 1961, one of their original number recalled those days in a fanzine article which, through the magic of the World Wide Web, can be read here.

Happy Birthday Everyone!

The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center will present NASA | ART: 50 Years of Exploration, Dec. 19 – March 7, 2010, organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in cooperation with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.