Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ Spreading the joy and the terror: this week’s recommendations for All Hallow’s Read are two classics by Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree (1972) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). (By the by, check out this video explanation from Neil Gaiman about All Hallow’s Read.)
The Halloween Tree is a great romp through the history of Hallowe’en (if not entirely historically accurate) and usually targeted at readers age 9-12. The back cover copy reads: “On Halloween night, eight trick-or-treaters gather at the haunted house by the edge of town, ready for adventure. But when Something whisks their friend Pip away, only one man can help the boys find him. Join the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud as he takes them on an unforgettable journey through space and time, deep into the mysteries of this spookiest of all nights. Can the boys save Pip before it’s too late…?”
Despite its protagonists being only a few years older than the heroes of The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes is a much darker novel (its scariness is debatable, I suppose). Part of its flap copy: Something Wicked “tells about the year Halloween came a week early. For Jim [Nightshade], age thirteen, eleven months, and twenty-three days, and his best friend, Will [Halloway], age thirteen, eleven months, and twenty-four days, it was the week they both grew up. Halloween came and went, but the boys would never be young again.” Of course, the arrival of Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show is what sets everything in action. Something Wicked This Way Comes is my favorite Bradbury novel, hands down, and I was lucky enough to get his signature in a sweet hardcover back in 1991. I also love the movie version of Something Wicked, which came out when I was fourteen, and I still have fond memories of its creepiness.
♦ Speaking of a favorite book, Jo Walton over at Tor.com has a reflection on Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, which is one of my all-time favorite fantasy novels. I’m looking forward to reading Walton’s thoughts on the other Earthsea books.
♦ Fantasy Matters has an enlightening interview with Carrie Ann Baade, one of my favorite contemporary artists (I have a print of the image to the left, The Involuntary Thoughts of Lady Caroline, hanging in my living room). Baade is curating an exhibit called Cute and Creepy at Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts this month and next, and the art in the exhibit—as well as Baade’s own—is well worth checking out.
♦ My friend Andy sent me this link to SF Signal’s Guide to Navigating NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books. Very cool.
♦ Over at Super Punch, John Struan “invited a few artists to create artwork inspired by Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Some of the illustrations are literal depictions in the book, while others are only loosely inspired by the concept.” The results are pretty cool, so give the link a look if you liked American Gods or just like good art. One of my favorites is to the left, an imagining of Mama-Ji (Kali) by Dean Reeves. I do love Kali.
♦ Last week was Steampunk Week over at Tor.com, and, of the many interesting articles, these two I found of particular interest: the first is “Crafting Steampunk Illustrations” by John Coulthart, wherein he explains his use of collage to create his steampunk images (I’m interested in collage as both an art and a form of expression). The second is “The Problem with ‘Asian Steampunk’” by Jess Nevins; the problem is that writers aren’t taking full advantage of the possibilities of “Asian steampunk.” As with anything Nevins writes, I learned a lot.
♦ Aaron Diaz has made a compelling revision of DC Comics’ characters over on his blog. What fascinates me about his ideas for re-imagining the Justice League and the Legion of Doom is how well he (1) keeps a sense of and connection to the historical but (2) blows the lid off it as well. Click through to see the character redesigns but stay to read the fascinating new backstories Diaz has created for each character (he’s even tweaked their powers) as well as his notes about why he’s made those design and background choices (it’s logical!). From what I’ve been reading about the DC reboot I’m gathering that while some things have changed, mostly the characters and/or the situations have stayed the same, making for a ho-hum reboot but also leading the way to more staid and maybe even stifled storytelling. If Diaz had been in charge of the reboot, I’d probably be buying those comics in single-issue form instead of waiting for one or two of the collected volumes (and this from the guy who’s excited about Azzarello’s take on Wonder Woman).
♦ One of the sad pieces of news this week is that Steve Jobs died. Every blog I’ve read has had some kind of comment or another, so I suppose I’ll add this to the list: While I have nothing personal to say about Jobs, I have a very personal connection to his products. I am most definitely a Mac man. When I made the leap from my Brother word processor (no memory, and the tiniest of screens to see a few lines of text at a time) in graduate school in 1992, I bought an Apple computer secondhand from a friend. I typed my master’s thesis on it and loved it. But that computer had a very small memory, so in the mid-nineties I upgraded to another Mac, also bought secondhand from a friend, and I used it quite happily until about 2005, when I bought my first new Mac, a PowerBook G4, on which I’m typing this post (I upgraded because of compatibility issues–the computer still ran just fine, and I kept the hard drive as a memento). I know Apple is a more expensive brand (this PowerBook was three or four times as much as people could spend on a PC laptop), but I have never been unhappy with any of my Macs. Knock wood, I’ve never lost any files, had a virus, or had a system crash. That, to me, is a value worth paying the pretty penny.
♦ Ray Russell, founder of Tartarus Press, made a short film called “A Mild Case of Bibliomania” about his book collecting, which spoke to me (though I’m a bit more far-ranging in my collections).
