Mercury Men is Here!

I've been waiting over two years for this web series to debut. As of today, it is up at Syfy.com.

Here's what I wrote back in August 2009 when I first learned about this project:

It's difficult to overstate how much I'm looking forward to the new web series, The Mercury Men. I've written about it on my science fiction blog, SF Safari, but I think it also has a place here, considering pulp fiction is one of the topics I address here in this blog.

The Mercury Men is a glorious throwback to the Cold War days and science fiction adventure from the days long gone. If you like the Republic serials of the 1930s, the movies of Indiana Jones, or the new novels of Gabriel Hunt, then you enjoy good, old-fashioned cliffhanger storytelling. That's exactly what the creators of The Mercury Men are tapping into and putting up on the web this fall. What caught my attention was the varied influences writer/director Christopher Preksta distilled into his work on the Mercury Men, especially the original Star Wars movie.

Take a read at the synopsis from the Mercury Men website:

Edward Borman, a lowly government office drone, finds himself trapped, when the deadly Mercury Men seize his office building as a staging ground for their nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” Edward must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.

The look and feel of the project are pure Outer Limits or Twilight Zone. This serial would have found a home right next to these 1960s seminal SF programs.

Now, it's arrived. Be sure also to check out the behind-the-scenes stuff, especially the one about fleshing out the greater Mercury Men universe and how it relates directly to Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

The icing on this wonderfully nostalgic cake is the digital collectible stuff. That is, pictures of magazine articles, trading cards, collectible paraphernalia, etc. as they would have been back in the 1970s. The nine-year-old kid inside of me (that truly never went away) just drools. These guys thought of everything!

What better way to spend a few minutes each day in July?

Oh, and isn't that poster just the coolest thing? I'd easily hang that in my writing room.