Ten Things for the Weekend #1

1: I really should have mentioned Asterios Polyp in my survey of Hugo nominable (I’ve decided on that word) comics. It’s David Mazzucchelli’s ‘great American graphic novel’, concerning a Professor of Greek descent who makes a huge change in lifestyle following the destruction of his home. It’s the magical realist elements which make it a matter for the Hugos, notably the fact that some of it’s narrated by the protagonist’s dead twin brother. It’s getting a lot of traction in the ‘best of 2009’ lists of the comics world, and stands for the whole field of book store graphic novels, representatives of which would grace any Hugo shortlist. Find out more here.

2: On the recommendation of author and puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal, we just saw Strings, an excellent fantasy adventure movie performed as puppetry, and set in a world of puppets, where strings stretching into the sky is a part of life. It’s remarkably un-twee, and instead does the SF thing of letting our discovery of the various interesting facets of the world (for instance a city gate that’s closed by raising a bar too high for puppets to step over it, thus blocking their strings from getting through) be at the heart of the narrative. It should be much better known. Do check it out.

3: My reading of Greg Egan is making me feel all noble for tackling something that features physics diagrams in the first two pages. I always return to pure SF, and rather miss it in the modern spread of genres. (Tor.com’s last two seasons of special features, for instance, Steampunk and Lovecraft have both harked back to the past. I seek a greater return to attempts at grasping the future.) The biography in the back of Schild’s Ladder rather underlines the point: ‘Greg Egan’s extraordinary hard SF novels have won him a reputation as one of the hardest… hard SF novelists.’ He’s that hard. Indeed, he makes Charlie Stross look like C.S.Lewis. But I’m enjoying the wholemeal.

4: At 2pm on the Thursday of the World Horror Convention in Brighton (details on the right margin) I’ll be taking part in the panel ‘A Genre by any Other Name: What is Horror?’ Which’ll be about the various different attempts to rename, redefine and pare down the genre.

5: Vworp Vworp! is a wonderful-looking new Doctor Who fanzine, specialising in Doctor Who Magazine and the comic strips contained therein. It’s even got some free Eleventh Doctor and Amy transfers, drawn by Paul Grist! You’re at least going to check out the link, right? And I’m sure you may well want to pre-order the fanzine, all of which you can do here.

6: I’ve always enjoyed Brian Cronin’s Comic Book Legends Revealed, one of the few comics history sites that can be thoroughly enjoyed by those who know nothing about the field. These tales of what might have been, and the extraordinary circumstances about how some things were (for instance, how a whole issue drawn for the Tarzan comic ended up in Battlestar Galactica, in column #238) give a real insight into how extreme our medium was, and sometimes still is. The writing style can sometimes be that of someone who wants to rather too definitely pin down meaning and avoid misinterpretation, but maybe that befits a historian of the weird. You can find every column here.

7: We went house hunting this afternoon (as Al Robertson mentioned on Twitter, it’s easier in the snow, they leave big tracks), and saw a few promising places, but driving through Oxfordshire villages on frosty roads, having to get momentum going for hills, was kind of trying. Here’s the view down the valley near my house at the moment:

Those of you in places that regularly have harsh winters may well be sighing and shaking their heads right now.

8: I’m enjoying Victoria Coren’s tweets about playing screamingly high-faluting poker in exotic locations. I’m terrible at the game. Whatever the opposite of a poker face is, that’s what I have. (My wife is quite good at it, winning a few bob every now and then. Every member of the Anglican clergy has to have an eccentricity. She has that and fighting in chainmail.) It takes a lot to get me to follow, on Twitter, someone I haven’t met: Victoria joins Kristen Bell and Caitlin Moran in quite a select group.