John Scalzi’s epic novel Old Man’s War heading to the big screen

John Scalzi’s epic science fiction novel Old Man’s War is coming to the big screen, and has a big name attached to direct it.

Deadline reports that Paramount Pictures has bought the rights to Old Man’s War, the first in a four-book series by Scalzi, and has attached Wolfgang Petersen as the director. Petersen’s last film, 2006′s Poseidon, didn’t exactly rock anyone’s boat, but the man’s previous credits include both blockbusters and solid action thrillers like Troy, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One, In The Line of Fire and the classic World War II German submarine drama that put him on the map, Das Boot.

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1st look at Chewbacca’s animated debut on Star Wars: The Clone Wars

It’s been a long time coming, but the Wookiee co-pilot will make an appearance on the season finale of Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars series, and Peter Mayhew—the man behind the mask—was instrumental in bringing the walking carpet to life.

The reason it took so long for Chewie to make it to Clone Wars had nothing to do with resistance on anyone’s part. In fact, supervising director Dave Filoni has wanted to include history’s most famous Wookiee—who is over 200 years old by the time he helps destroy the first Death Star—in his sweeping drama for a while. But technology got in the way. See What he told Entertainment Weekly

Scientist amazingly survives zapping by particle accelerator

In comic books, if you get zapped by a particle accelerator, you’re turned into a superhero. But if you get zapped by one in the real world, you die, right? That’s the way it’s supposed to work out, but a Russian researcher stuck his head into a running particle accelerator and, amazingly, lived!

Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, a scientist working on the Soviet particle accelerator the synchrotron U-70 at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino leaned over a piece of equipment in 1978 and accidentally stuck his head through part of the accelerator that the proton beam was running through. He felt no pain, but saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns.”

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Nicholas Courtney Passes. This Demands A Five Round Salute

Nicholas Courtney, known to and beloved by Doctor Who fans worldwide as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, one of the longest-serving co-stars of the series who appeared opposite five television Doctors, has died, aged 81.

His first brush with Doctor Who was to be as Space Security Agent Bret Vyon in the First Doctor epic The Daleks’ Master Plan. For Doctor Who fans, of course, he will always be remembered as UNIT stalwart Lethbridge-Stewart. Originally slated to play Captain Knight in the Second Doctor adventure The Web Of Fear, he was ‘promoted’ to the role of Colonel by director Douglas Camfield when original actor David Langton pulled out, and returned a year as a newly promoted Brigadier in The Invasion, a role he was to become associated with for over forty years! Appearing as one of the main characters throughout the Third Doctor’s incarnation, he was then to appear with every other classic series Doctor, both during the television show’s original run and through the Big Finish audio adventures. Mentioned a number of times in the revived series of Doctor Who, he was to appear once more in character in 2008 as Sir Alistair in spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

He is survived by his wife Karen, his son Philip and daughter Bella.

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