"Where are Germany's futurists? Few and far between. Why should America and Britain dominate the science fiction field? Germany has been, I suspect, waiting for someone worthy -- not only Germany, but German women. She's here. Her name is Myra Çakan and she has the scope, the independence of thought, the vision, and the intelligence for the job."

John Shirley - 1999

Myra Çakan

Studied drama and music. Attended workshop on sit-com writing by Comedy Writer Ronald Wolfe, Screenplay and treatment courses by Don Bohlinger. Living as author and freelance journalist near Hamburg, Germany. Published in magazines such as: Die Woche, Konr@d, c't, DER SPIEGEL, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. Wrote an adaptation of her acclaimed novel "When the Music's Over" - on assignment of Red Beat Pictures Filmproduction, Berlin.

Published Fiction Novels:

"When the music's over" Ein Cyberpunk Roman, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 1999

"Downtown Blues" Ein Cyberpunk Roman, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 2001

"Begegnung in der High Sierra" - Luke Harrison Weltraumabenteurer - Part 1, (Space Opera) Argument/Nachtbrenner, Hamburg, 2000

"Zwischenfall an einem regnerischen Nachmittag" - Luke Harrison Weltraumabenteurer - Part 2, (Space Opera) Argument/Nachtbrenner, Hamburg, 2000

For a more detailed list of publications and radioplays, please check this link:

Myra Çakan: Veröffentlichungen

The "Luke Harrison"- Trilogy recently was optioned by Red Beat Pictures (same Company that holds the movie rights for "When the Music's Over").

Myra Çakan is represented in the United States by Ashley Grayson: graysonagent@earthlinkt.net

To contact the author : info@dardariee.de

WTMO - Synopsis

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD!

A girl from Greenland with many talents, roaming though catastrophe-ridden Europe, is gathering a bunch of freethinkers, who defy the alien regime: brilliant cyberpunk action full of rock lyrics and bittersweet legends. Earth in the 21. century: large areas are contaminated by radioactivity, the Netherlands and the German coast have drowned because of the greenhouse effect. Many people are suffering from "the disease", caused by environmental damages and resistance to antibiotics. Some years ago, aliens have landed: after the initial resistance people came to terms with the business-minded aliens, which now have bases all over the planet. In this setting the following persons meet: Skadi, a young girl from Greenland, looking for the ultimate New-Year's-Eve-party; Garfield, an orphaned boy; Wiesel, a runaway and a gifted hacker; Sunshine, girl leader of a children's gang named "tunnel soldiers"; Blue, singer of a rockband that is falling apart; Pierce, a former musician, who is living on a boat and finds an underwater base of the aliens; and Doc, science fiction author from San Francisco, who fled from area 51. Together they start to fight against the invaders and the corrupt bosses, who sold earth to the aliens... The scene of the action is Hamburg, Berlin and an artificial island in the Atlantic Ocean.

"When the Music's Over" - Reviews

Which drugs does Myra Çakan actually take? And where does one get them?

Helmut Ziegler "Die Woche"

...Myra Çakan's book portrays one of few exceptional appearances of rare German science fiction: fast, hard and direct, with a tendancy to melancholy. Amazon.de

...A book with an unusually secure style and imagination. I am eagerly awaiting Myra Cakan's next book.

Alien Contact

Reunion of the Blade Runner

The earth and the human civilization are in a desolate situation. Environmental disasters like the rising of the sea have destroyed half of Europe, government order is hardly recognizable. Present as well are the attack from aliens, who like a troop invading the earth and mixing under the people like tourists, some as collectors of military equipment or drug dealers, when they are not devastating cities where supposed opposition fighters could be. Diseases are spreading and the drugs and parasites from aliens are not less than deadly.

The survivors are trying to live as nomads with what is left over and are cultivating a kind of debris culture. "The planet has become a junk store.” Spitzbergen reaches the high of European culture, the island Freezone by Africa is an "El Dorado” for adventurers and traders. And in Antarctica there is a high tech center for the rich who have joined the aliens early on and are rewarded with a seemingly save place and hope of immortality for their betrayal of the earth. Together they control the world economy and plan the upcoming invasion.

Some of the powerless and uprooted survivors try to keep pieces of their world and heritage, roaming as a theater group through the country or organizing a rock festival. Others as the "Tunnel Soldaten" have a guerilla war against the "Vierfinger" or "Käfer", which is what the aliens are called and what is written on their flags.

The fate of a handful people in episode-like form is portrayed, their paths in one way or another cross: the young Eskimo woman Skadi, who wants to see the rest of continental Europe, the twelve year old Garfield, the juvenile hacker Wiesel, the fighting Sunshine as the leader of the Tunnel-Soldiers, the former science fiction author Doc (who occasionally of all things was isolated in Area 51 by the aliens) as well as Blue and Pierce, who both played with the legendary Bladerunner until Pierce has a dispute with his brother and leaves the band to go his own way - as a diver who seeks things which will sell. At the end there is a reunion of the Bladerunner on Freezone before the drug addict Pierce, who is the carrier of an alien parasite dies, and the Tunnel-Soldiers find a way together with hacker Wiesel to defeat the aliens.

The Hamburger Myra Çakan, active journalist, and who has become well-known through a large numbers of science fiction stories, which have appeared among other in the computer magazine c't, has produced a very remarkable debut novel which one must count among the best German science fiction novels of the last years.

If it is really about a cyberpunk novel as the subtitle indicates, is left open-therefore the cyberpunk component is marked too weakly - but comes at least out of this corner and meets with his unheroic protagonists its snotty tone and its relationship to rock music the feeling of cyberpunk better than every German science fiction novel before. There are similarities to Phillip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, George R.R. Martin, John Shirley and others, with it in the text, the title, and the chapter headings numerous allusions of science fiction and rock music, and the author also incorporates passages from science fiction novels and films (...) A good, a competent novel.

H.J. Alpers "Wunderwelten"

Red Beat Pictures Filmproduktion

Press Release / June 2000  

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER

Myra Çakan's remarkable cyber punk novel "When the Music's Over" will be turned into an ambitious movie by German film production company Red Beat Pictures, Berlin. The novel has been released in autumn 1999 at Argument Publishing Company, Hamburg, and Red Beat has bought the film rights already in advance after contacting Myra Çakan for the first time early in 1999. Then, the manuscript of the novel wasnÔt even finished, but it was obvious how unusual this novel was going to be.

Myra Çakan in the meantime has written the first draft of the screenplay; the final draft will be in English and carried out in collaboration with her by American author John Shirley. John Shirley -- among connoisseurs of the genre known as "The father of cyber punk" -- is internationally well known for his novels and short stories as well as for his film scripts, among them his co-authorship of "The Crow", starring unforgettable Brandon Lee.

Red Beat is expecting to have a final script by the end of 2000. It will take a lot of courage and skill and will also be a real challenge for Myra Çakan to shorten the very complex novel -- full of charming characters and a variety of strange locations -- down to the size of a film script equivalent to about a two-hour running time film.

For making the script attractive to target readers -- among them especially people respectively companies that are expected to invest their money into the production -- the talented young Slovakian artist Martina Pilcerova has created production design ideas for aliens, space ships, cities and landscapes. These designs first of all will be used to visualize the atmosphere Myra Çakan was able to evoke by means of literature and to illustrate the script.

At the end of 2001 the financing of the project hopefully has been closed, and pre-production can start early in 2002. Since in fact the movie is very costly, pre-production will be carried out very thoroughly. Red Beat strives to start principal shooting early in 2003, thus, considering an equally lavish post-production, "When the Music's Over" can be released in 2004 to an international audience.

Red Beat Pictures Filmproduktion Company Profile Film production company Red Beat Pictures was found early in 2000 in Berlin, Germany. Although young as a company, the four shareholders and creative producers Herbert Gehr (managing director), Michael Helfrich, Ali Eckert and Nils Dünker bring along a lot of different professional experiences. Based on a homogenous attitude towards filmmaking, a heterogeneous mixture of different professional experiences, their temperaments and skills complement each other.

Herbert Gehr Film historian, from 1986 until 1998 worked as curator at the German Film Museum, Frankfurt am Main. He was Head of the Gallery Exhibitions Department and Deputy Director. Gehr is author and producer of many touring exhibitions, catalogues and contributions to film books and magazines. He has giving a lot of lectures in many countries, mostly for the Goethe Institute, and taught at Philipps University, Marburg. In 1998 he quit his job at the museum and went to Berlin as a free lance screenplay evaluator and producer, before founding âHerbert Gehr FilmproduktionÔ as the core of Red Beat Pictures. Together with Tom Zickler/Daniel Witte, Checkpoint Berlin, Gehr is producer of the thriller "Falling Rocks" (dir. Peter Keglevic), a film that premiered at Munich Film Festival, June 2000.

Michael Helfrich From 1989 on worked in management of the film license trading company âInterfilmÔ and thus co-responsible for such internationally celebrated films as "Dekalog" by Krystof Kieslowski (European Film Award 1991). From 1991 to 1999 he was managing director of Upstart Filmproduktion, Wiesbaden, one of GermanyÔs hottest visual effects companies. Together with Tom Zickler, Checkpoint Berlin, he is producer of the neo-romantic comedy "Love Never Fails" (dir. Hansjörg Thurn), a film that premiered at Munich Film Festival, June 2000.

Ali Eckert Founded Upstart Filmproduktion in 1990. Since then works as author, producer, director and cinematographer on lots of shorts, commercials and music videos. At the moment he is pre-producing "Too Tough to Die", a thriller written by Ali Eckert and Peter Thorwarth ("Bang Boom Bang"). "Too Tough to Die" will be shot in summer 2001 with an American cast on location in the US in collaboration with Indigo Filmproduktion. "Too tough to die" will be featuring legendary punkrock act The Ramones, exclusively re-uniting to contribute to this movie.

Nils Dünker Studied film production and media economics at Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, München. While still studying, Nils Dünker produced a lot of national and international commercials and music videos. Thereafter he worked for major film and tv production companies such as 'MME', 'Roman Kuhn & Partner Filmproduktion', München, 'Sonne, Mond & Sterne Film- und Fernsehproduktion', München, and 'Helkon Media AG', München. In 1999 he became managing director of 'MME Fiction' in Berlin before joining Red Beat Pictures. At the moment Red Beat Pictures has around 20 film and tv projects in concrete development or in pre-production; half of them designed for the national market, half of them for international distribution.

Red Beat Pictures - e-mail: info@redbeat.de

"Luke Harrison" - Review

Luke Harrison is a strange hero...

He makes it through life with fraud and games of chance. Though one sday he has a little too much luck in the game, and the rowdies from the syndicate are on his heels. Mars seems to be good refuge, but the trip is expensive and as Luke arrives he finds out that the wonderful red planet is very desolate and that he is there with empty pockets. Through a dirty trick he is forced for several years to perform a tedious duty which does not benefit him. Just the opposite: It ends in a disaster, his ship is flattened, and he barely gets away with his life. Finally again his own master, he meets Lady Rhiannon von Dardariee, a puzzling young woman, who asks him for help to get back her stolen crystals from the evil trader Gharf. Luke agrees, as he hopes to find out the cause of his ship catastrophe. The events are drastic, and Luke is not always in charge of the situation. One can tell in t

Hardy Kettlitz - Alien Contact