The Astounding, The Amazing, and The Unknown
By Paul Malmont
Hardcover | Kindle
Simon & Schuster
Release date: July 5, 2011

The Astounding, The Amazing, And The Unknown is a vibrant, highly suspenseful race to solve a Nikola Tesla mystery, defeat the Nazis, and help end World War II. In a desperate attempt to make that happen, the U.S. Navy forms a team of some of the best and brightest imaginations from the world of popular science fiction pulp magazines of their time. The team includes Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Walter Gibson (of The Shadow fame), and a pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, all of whom were regular contributors to the pulps named in the title of this book.

Using equal parts imagination and scientific research, the team attempts to accomplish their government-mandated goal of thwarting the enemy by creating death rays and invisibility cloaks for naval ships. In the midst of their research, the group stumbles upon an unconfirmed experiment of Tesla’s that may have either led to free electricity across America or a super-bomb capable of completely obliterating a whole country half a world away, as well as an old rivalry between two scientists that may have led to murder. It’s up to the team to sort out the mystery and complete Tesla’s experiment before the military shuts down the project altogether or someone else shuts them up permanently [...]

Yesterday, the first image of some of the dwarves — Nori, Ori, and Dori — from director Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit.

Now, two more dwarves has been revealed with a first look at brothers Oin and Gloin from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Check out the photo above.

The photo shows John Callen as Oin and Peter Hambleton as Gloin [...]

The first trailer has been released for the upcoming animated feature Batman: Year One, and boy is it beautiful.

Watch the trailer here below.

This release comes in an established line of straight-to-DVD animated features from DC Animation, spearheaded by legendary creator Bruce Timm. Batman: Year One adapts the comic book story of the same name from the incredible artist David Mazzucchelli and writer Frank Miller during a time when he was writing the best comic books of his life [...]

Amazon is currently running a 4th Of July Sale – Buy One, Get One Free sale on select video games.

Note, the sale is valid til the end of the day PST on Saturday, July 9, 2011, while supplies last and the sale items must be sold and shipped by Amazon.com.

Here’s a select few titles from the deal here below.

Michael Jackson The Experience
Dragon Age: Origins Awakening
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II
Guitar Hero 5 – Guitar Bundle
Disney Epic Mickey – Collector’s Edition
Fallout 3 Game Ad-On Pack
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
DC Universe Online – Collector’s Edition [...]

The Blu-ray box set deal of the day over at Amazon this is the classic 1960s television series The Prisoner for only $25 (that’s 75% off the list price of $99.95).

(Comparatively, the Collector’s Edition DVD set is $39.45).

Note, this sale is valid all this week through, Saturday, July 9, while supplies last.

The Blu-ray set for The Prisoner, which starred Patrick McGoohan, contains a high definition restoration and sound re-mix of the series’ original 17 episodes, and includes tons of bonus material like a feature-length documentary, featurettes, rare footage, audio commentaries, and much more [...]

The Gold Box spotlight deal of the day over at Amazon today is Friends – The Complete Series Collection DVD box set for $94.49 (60% off the list price of $235.98).

The DVD set comes with 40 discs of all 10 seasons of the popular NBC sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. The show started Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matthew Leblanc, Matthew Perry, and Lisa Kudrow as a group of close friends in their twenties living in New York City.

Note, this deal is only for today, Friday, July 8, 2011, until midnight PST until supplies last [...]

The first teaser trailer for season 2 of The Walking Dead has found its way to the ‘net, and you can watch it here right now!

It looks as though the trailer may have leaked a little early (not that any of us are complaining), so be sure to watch it before it gets pulled! Even if that does happen, however, it’s assumed that AMC will have this bad boy live on their site very soon.

Continue on below to check out the first teaser trailer for season 2 of The Walking Dead.

It feels like just yesterday that the shortened 6–episode first season of The Walking Dead ended in December and we were faced with a lengthy 11–month wait until season 2 arrived. Now we’re only a few months away from the October premiere, and excitement is beginning to rebuild. [...]

A new director has been chosen to bring the hit Naughty Dog video game, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, to life on the big screen.

Sony Pictures has entered into negotiations with Neil Burger to both write and direct the adaptation, which follows explorer Nathan Drake as he follows the clues left by his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake, toward a great (and dangerous) treasure.

Burger hasn’t done a ton of movies so far, but he wrote and directed the enjoyable Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti film, The Illusionist, and The Lucky Ones, which starred Tim Robbins and Rachel McAdams. Most recently he directed the Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro thriller, Limitless, but did not pen the script for that movie.

Sony has high hopes of turning this into their own Indiana Jones–type franchise, which makes perfect sense as Drake is very much a modernized Indy, getting into plenty of life–threatening situations and spurting off countless one–liners as he seeks out long lost treasures and historical artifacts. [...]

The $10 t-shirt deal of the day over at Teefury today is a Star Wars-themed shirt called “Kessel Fun-Run” by artist Captain RibMan.

The shirt is celebrating what seems to be the 34th Annual “Wookiee-Pox Awareness” Charity 12-Parsec Kessel Fun-Run. (Sounds like fun!)

The sale began at Teefury today, Thursday, July 7, 2011, at midnight EST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore [...]

Funny Or Die has released a new video called Field of Dreams 2: NFL Lockout, a spoofy sequel to the 1989 film Field of Dreams, which starred Kevin Costner an Iowa corn farmer who builds a baseball diamond in his fields with some surprising results.

In this amusing 3-minute sequel, Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner is an Iowa corn farmer who hears voices and interprets it as a message to build a football field in his fields. And as with the original, we know, if you build it they will come, and come they do as the NFL shows up!

Watch the video here below.

And be sure to stick around after the credits [...]

The $10 t-shirt deal of the day over at RIPT Apparel is a mash-up of Star Wars and the Dunkin’ Donuts slogan called “The Empire Runs on Donuts” by artist Karen Hallion.

The sale at RIPT began today, Thursday, July 7, 2011, at midnight CST, and will continue for 24 hours from then, and once it’s over, it will not be sold on the site anymore [...]

Director Peter Jackson, who’s working in full force on The Hobbit movies, has posted a first look at some of the Dwarves from the first film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — the brothers, Dori, Nori, and Ori.

Check out the photo above (click for larger full, view).

The photo shows Jed Brophy as Nori, Adam Brown as Ori, and Mark Hadlow as Dori [...]

The video game deal of the week over at Amazon this week is Duke Nukem Forever for Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and PC Download for only $37.99 each (that’s 24% – 37% off the respective list prices of $49.99 – $59.99).

This sale is valid only for this week, while supplies last [...]

We all know how bad movies based on games tend to be (and vice versa), but there are some games out there that, if done correctly, could make some pretty fantastic movies.

One of the big ones that jumps to mind is the Mass Effect trilogy. One of the biggest game series to-date, the BioWare property takes the action–RPG to incredible places, making for an intense and compelling story and a truly must–play experience for any gamer out there.

A Mass Effect movie has been whispered about for a while now, dating back to around when Mass Effect 2 was being released where Casey Hudson was quoted saying “Obviously we have a tremendous amount of interest from people in Hollywood to make a major motion picture about Mass Effect. The most important thing for us is, we don’t just want to see a movie get made. We want to see a great movie get made, if it’s going to get done at all.” That was followed by the news that Legendary Pictures had secured the rights to turn the game into a movie, but that was the last we heard about it…until now. [...]

Have You Seen The Surfing Trooper?

He’s a stormtrooper on vacation from the Empire who’s surfing around the world.

Visit Surfing Trooper to see photos of his travel adventures so far and be on the lookout for him in your area. You never know when and where he’ll show up!

Chances are, he’ll have a surfboard, but even when he doesn’t, the pics are great, like this one — probably my favorite one of his travels thus far — where he goes to kick some hobbit ass in Hobbiton in New Zealand!!! [...]

The digital deal of the day over at Amazon today is Disney’s 50th animated feature Tangled, which is available for rental for only $.99. The film stars the voice cast of Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, and Ron Perlman, with music from Alan Menken.

This deal is valid only for today, Thursday, July 7, 2011, until midnight PST. Once you activate the rental through the Amazon Instant Video service, you’ll have access to the movie for 48 hours. (There is no option at this time to purchase this digital version through Amazon Instant Video.)

If you’d like to purchase a physical copy of the movie, it’s also available as a 4-Disc Blu-ray Combo Pack (Blu-ray 3D + Blu- ray + DVD + Digital Copy) — which comes with a digital copy — as well as a 2-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack and a standard 1-Disc DVD [...]

On Free Comic Book Day back in May, BOOM! Studios offered up the Elric: The Balance Lost FCBD Edition, which contained an original 8-page prequel story for their new ongoing Elric comic book series from Chris Roberson and Francesco Biagini. The issue also included a lengthy, informative essay on the Elric multiverse, along with illustrations.

If you didn’t get a chance to pick up the issue for free on FCBD, you can read it for free online right now at elriccomic.com.

The regular series launched today in comic shops as well as for digital devices with Elric: The Balance Lost #1, making this one of a select few titles to get a day-and-date release (meaning, the digital version is available the same day as the physical copy) [...]

It’s no big revolution that sometimes advertisements are digitally added to TV programs—usually during sporting events on the fields and walls—but it may just be reaching ridiculous levels in odd places.

Someone was watching a How I Met Your Mother rerun recently and noticed something interesting: some sort of magazine or book bearing the mark of the upcoming Kevin James family comedy, Zookeeper. The problem here is, the movie comes out this Friday, July 8th, and this particular episode of How I Met Your Mother first aired on March 19, 2007 (see the original screenshot of the episode pre–digital ad by clicking right here).

Though the random advertisement is very strange, let’s be honest: this isn’t really harming anything or anyone. That said, how far is too far when it comes to digitally inserting advertisements into TV shows and other things? And does this new ad cross that line, or are you OK with it? [...]

The latest trailer for the upcoming 3D Conan the Barbarian reboot, directed by Marcus Nispel (2003′s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake), has been unveiled at the film’s UK Facebook page. You can watch it below at the end of this article.

Nispel’s feature marks the first time in nearly three decades that the Cimmerian warrior, created by Texas writer Robert E. Howard in 1932, has slashed his way across the big screen. The last time was 1984′s Conan the Destroyer, which coincidentally was the final time Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up Conan’s sword. The latest actor to inherit the role is Jason Momoa, best known to fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones (I really need to catch up on that show) as Khal Drogo. Supporting Momoa in his first starring role in a film are Rachel Nichols (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra), Rose McGowan (Planet Terror), with Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as Conan’s father Corin and Stephen Lang (Avatar) as the film’s villain Khalar Zym [...]

The first few spy images of star Brad Pitt on the set of the zombie apocalypse flick, World War Z, have found their way to the web.

In the pictures, Pitt is seen trying to enter Israel, which has quarantined itself from the rest of the zombie–ridden world. The story is told from the perspective of multiple survivors of the apocalypse years after the zombie outbreak first occurred. You’ll also see a few downed zombies in the images (nothing too exciting, however), and some peeks at the highly secure locations built to keep survivors safe.

You can click on over to the other side now to check out these first spy pics from the set of World War Z now! [...]