Joss Whedon sweeps poll

New Scientist ran a poll on their readers' favorite SF works (books, TV shows, and films), and Joss Whedon took the top two spots in the poll:

Your votes are in — all 4260 of them — and the winner is clear: Joss Whedon. Best known as the brains behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon claimed the first and second slots on our poll for his short lived 2002 TV series, Firefly, and its silver-screen extension, Serenity.

The Fox network only aired 11 episodes of Firefly, and not in the right order at that. But strong DVD sales of the series (No.5 in amazon.com DVD rankings) helped convince Universal Studios to back the film version. To date, Serenity has pulled in $20 million in US sales and reached the No.2 ranking at the box office. In the UK, it opened as the No.1 film on 7 October.