Back in December of 2010 it was announced that Syfy and Universal Pictures would be joining forces to create Syfy Films, with an aim at producing one or two movies a year with relatively small budgets of $5 million to $25 million each.

Now comes word that the new venture has made their first acquisition, the ongoing superhero anthology titled Wild Cards. Created by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, and a group of New Mexico authors largely inspired by the role-playing game Superworld, Wild Cards is set in a post-World War II alternate history where a virus released over the skies of New York City wipes out 90% of all people, 9% are turned into mutated creatures, and 1% obtain superpowers.

There’s been a book in the works for a while now from author John Shirley (with an intro chapter by Ken Levine). The book is called BioShock: Rapture, and it was originally planned to be released around the time that BioShock 2, the follow-up to the instant video game classic from 2K Games, hit stores.

Unfortunately the book disappeared for a while, but according to Amazon, it now has a release date and can be pre-ordered right now! And with a visit to Tor Books, the publisher behind the novel, confirmation was discovered: BioShock: Rapture will hit book stores on March 1, 2011. If you want to pre-order the book, you can do so at Amazon (Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle) and get ready to discover the origins of Rapture.

For the most part, novels that present stories set in existing popular video game worlds don’t always do so well. But there have been occasions where a title does really well, such as in the case of Halo, which has seen some popular books follow the various game releases. That said, this particular book sounds like a can’t-miss for fans of BioShock.

You can read a full synopsis of BioShock: Rapture below.

Sunday morning brought an interesting panel at C2E2 2010 with the always entertaining Bill Willingham, writer of Vertigo’s Fables, as well as writer for JSA at DC, and the Angel series for IDW. One of the items talked about at the panel was the re-release of a novel Willingham wrote several years ago that’s been out of print for a while. The novel is titled Down the Mysterly River and will be released by TOR books sometime in the Fall of 2011.

The story is about a character named Max the Wolf who is mistakenly sent to the wrong afterlife because of his name, and then goes on a wild adventure with a bunch of other animals. Willingham remarked that this novel, which was originally released in limited numbers in 2001, is essentially a “proto-Fables story” and that the book is an unofficial Fables tie-in, so I’m willing to bet that fans of the series will be looking forward to this. Unfortunately, Willingham did not give any information about a follow-up to the official Fables novel, Peter & Max, which was released earlier this year, although he did mention that characters from that book would soon be showing up in the Fables comic.

Shadow Prowler
Book 1 of The Chronicles Of Siala Trilogy
Hardcover
By Alexey Pehov
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Tor Books
Release date: February 16, 2010

The first novel of a new trilogy, Alexey Pehov‘s Shadow Prowler, is classic sword and sorcery fiction, practically overflowing with wizards, warriors, thieves, and mythological creatures roaming a rich fantasy landscape. With a certain tongue in cheek humour and the traditional quest story arc, Shadow Prowler carries a lot of appeal for traditional fans who enjoy the high fantasy genre.

Shadow Prowler follows the story of Shadow Harold, a thief given the task of reclaiming a magic Horn to keep the black evil of the Nameless One from consuming the kingdom of Siala. Teamed up with an Elfin Princess, ten members of a legendary warrior troop known as the Wild Hearts, and a goblin jester, they must make their way through an underground labyrinth composed of the bones of the dead to reclaim what’s been stolen from them by demons hoping to unleash their evil master.