Roberson's Interminable Ramble

Okay, three scenes became five, and were some of the hardest to write of the book so far, but I got them through. And that's "Jubilee" done.



I'm now assuming a total word count of 140K, though I think it'll be a bit longer than that.

No sample today, as there was nothing in today's writing that wouldn't completely spoil the ending of the book. Big reveals throughout, including just what Omega is, just why the Ghost Fox is so much older than Sandford Blank, and who Jules Dulac really is.

Tomorrow I got to the post office and do some administrivia, and Friday I tighten up the outline to "Millennium," so that I can start work on Monday writing the last secton. Then I'll just need to shuffle the three threads together like a deck of cards, and the book is ready to roll.

This SNL Digital Short from last week's episode is one of the funniest things on SNL in a good long while.

Jay Stephens points to a promo video on the Cartoon Network site that has a few brief glimpses of The Secret Saturdays.

If you scoot on over to the Cartoon Network 'Upfronts' page and click on New Shows, you'll get a bit more buzz on my new animated series 'The Secret Saturdays', including something called a Sizzle Reel.

If these little glimpses are any indication, the series promises to be made of awesome.

By my reckoning, I'm now three scenes from the end of "Jubilee." Unfortunately, one of them presents a vexing problem, the solution for which I've not yet found. So what should be the work of a couple of hours might end up being a mite longer. But with any luck, I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.



Who am I kidding? This isn't going to be 120K words long. Not when it's already 110K and I've still got a whole act to write. It'll be a fat book, no question. But meaty...

Today Dulac faced off against the guy in the smoked-glass spectacles in a sword-fight, and we finally learned what Sandford Blank keeps in the locked room at the top of the stair. Lots of final confrontations, big reveals, and mystery's solved. The following is about the only sample I can share of the day's writing, without spoiling the end.

The trio said their farewells to Baron Carmody, who hardly seemed to notice. Leaving the Carmody house near Grosvenor Square, it was only a short distance to the offices of J. Lafayette on New Bond Street, a matter of some four or five blocks, just up from the Doré and Grosvenor Galleries.

The photographic firm of J. Lafayette was located in a five storey building, surmounted by the queen’s royal crest in bas relief, above an image of a sunburst. The Lafayette firm, headquartered in Dublin, had only recently opened a branch in London, added to those already in Glasgow and Manchester.

The offices had just opened for the day, and Blank, Miss Bonaventure, and Taylor were asked to wait on the ground floor while someone in authority could be summoned. They were shown into the waiting gallery on the ground floor, where the handiwork of Lafayette and company were on display, in particular a familiar image of Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee, ten years previous, which according to the accompanying placard had earned Lafayette a Royal Warrant as “Her Majesty's Photographer in Dublin.”

After a brief wait, the branch’s manager appeared in the waiting gallery. Blank, presenting his featureless calling card, employed a bit of persuasion, and in short order the trio were being escorted into the development labs on the building’s second floor. The heavily shuttered room smelled of chemicals, and the already developed photographs hung drying on lines strung from wall to wall, like photographic garlands.

Most of the photographs were staged against the backdrop which had been arranged in the corner of the Great Ballroom of Devonshire House. There was Miss Arthur Paget as Cleopatra and Daisy Pless as the Queen of Sheba, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as Duke Robert of Normandy and the Princess of Wales as Marguerite de Valois, Frances Evelyn Warwick as Marie Antoinette and the Honorable Reginald Fitzwilliam as Admiral Lord Nelson. There was even the Baron Carmody as the Roman Briton war duke Arthur, in contrast to the more fanciful King Arthurs portrayed by the 7th Baron Rodney in full plate armor and Grosvenor in surcoat and mail. And here was the Lady Priscilla as Gwenhwyfar, in a flowing gown of samite, looking years younger with her hair cascading over her shoulders than she did in modern dress with it lacquered into a bun.

Some of the photographs, though, were not staged, but were more candid snap-shots of the Great Ballroom itself, and of the crowds milling there. The Crystal Stair curved up out of view in one shot, while another showed the serried ranks of waltzers moving across the floor. And in one photograph, in the far right side of the image, was plainly visible a man in modern dress, his hair wiry and his beard stringy, carrying in his arms a long slender case. The man’s eyes were wide and crazed-looking, and his lip curled in an expression of distaste.

It was, unmistakably, Mervyn Fawkes.

A good day, as I managed to get through quite a bit of action, a murder, and an investigation.




Today, I got to the Devonshire House Ball, which has been a key part of End of the Century since I stumbled upon it by accident last spring (though I've since learned that MI8 was apparently not headquartered at the later Devonshire House during WWII, despite what some online sources report). There are an amazing wealth of resources online about this one party, and the Times article that ran the next day was particularly useful. Have I mentioned lately that I love the internet...

In short order, Blank and Miss Bonaventure were rushed round to the servant’s entrance at the rear of the house, and outfitted in appropriate costume. They were reunited, moments later, Blank in the guise of a musketeer from the days of Louis XIII, a rapier at his side, and Miss Bonaventure as an Egyptian maiden, her eye lined with kohl, a beaded wig on her head. Her wide silver bracelet with its lenticular gem at the end of her bared arm seemed to fit the motif, offering a counterpoint to the broad collar she wore, from which depended a scarab encrusted with jewels of paste.

“Why, Blank, don’t you cut a dashing figure?”

Blank swept the broad-brimmed hat from his head, and bowed low. “Cleopatra at her finest was never as lovely.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we, O Vision of the Nile?”

They stepped through the side door, and found themselves at the foot of the well-known Crystal Staircase, its bronze-scrolled handrail gently spiraling around the glass newel. At the head of the staircase stood the Duke of Devonshire, in the dress of Charles V, and wearing a genuine collar and badge of the Golden Fleece lent to him by the Prince of Wales. At his side was the Duchess, as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, a grand tiara above her brow. The pair wore painted smiles, unable to completely hide their unease from the seven hundred or so guests who crowded the Great Ballroom.

The guests had been arriving for nearly an hour, though the quoted arrival time of half-past ten had only just struck, and crowded now in the ballroom, lit by two huge chandeliers hanging from ornamented rosettes, from which radiated delicate floral motifs. The walls to either side were broken up into panels of white and yellow brocade, with long mirrors between the windows, doubling and redoubling the swelling crowd within. The reflections helped to accentuate the unreal nature of the gathering, which looked for all the world as if someone had torn down the walls of time, and from all epochs of history men and women had been thrown together. Italians of the Renaissance, French princes and princesses, Napoleons and Josephines, Cavaliers and Puritans, Orientals of lands far away and long gone, and more, and more. In the far corner, a makeshift studio had been assembled, and the partygoers one by one had their images immortalized in photograph.

It was clear that the costumiers of London had been worked to a frazzle, these last weeks. As had been explained to Blank and Miss Bonaventure, the invitations specified that party-goers should appear “in an allegorical or historical costume dated early than 1820. ” Not a guest, nor a musician, nor a herald or servant, or even the waiting maids who helped the ladies in the cloak room was permitted to appear in a dress later than the beginning of the current century, hence the pair’s need for a change of costume upon arrival. In the cloak room, they’d heard that an uninvited interloper in modern dress had been spotted early on, but had been quickly ejected by the Duke’s servants.

It was whispered that this would be the grandest fancy dress ball in nearly a quarter century, since the Prince of Wales’s famous ball at Marlborough House in 1874, in which guests arrived in the costume of one of a number of distinct quadrilles, this group costumed in the manner of the Venetian court, that one in the style of the Vandyck, even one costumes as characters from a pack of cards. In the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball, by contrast, there were a number of different “courts,” each headed by a well-known lady, attended by “princes” and “courtiers.” The Austrian Court of Maria Theresa, Empress Catherine’s Court, the Queen of Sheba’s retinue, the Italian Procession, the Doge, even two competing courts of Queen Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table.

What the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire wanted very much to keep from the party-goers, and in particular from the Prince of Wales and the rest of the royal party, who were due to arrive in another half hour, was the fact that one of the Courts was without a sovereign, and that a queen lay dead in the garden.

Kathryn Cramer has posted the contents for her and David Hartwell's Year's Best Fantasy 7, which includes two stories from Cross Plains Universe, Michael Moorcock's "The Roaming Forest" and Howard Waldrop's "Thin, On the Ground."

Bill Baker has posted an excerpt from his new Alan Moore's Exit Interview, a book-length conversation, in which Moore talks a bit about the contents of the forthcoming League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (which is not to be confused with League of Extraordinary Gentlement: Volume III).

Imagine a source book that has got lots of interesting snippets from here and there in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's three or four hundred year history. But, these are presented in some unusual ways. For example, when we want to talk about the founding of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which involved Prospero, then we include a lost Shakespeare folio for a play called Fairy's Fortunes Founded, which Shakespeare commenced to write in 1616, which was the year of his death, and thus never completed. So we have got the opening scenes of Fairy's Fortunes Founded reproduced in the manner of a Shakespeare folio as part of The Black Dossier, fully illustrated and featuring some pretty good Shakespeare, if I say so myself.

[snip]

There's a Beat Generation novel, allegedly inspired by the activities of The League in America during the 1950s, as written by Sal Paradise, who was the surrogate for Jack Kerouac that appeared in On the Road. And it's a Beat novel called The Crazy Wide Forever, which has got The League teaming up with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty against the villainous Dr. Sax, from another Kerouac book, as he was a kind of cross between Fu Manchu, The Shadow, and William Boroughs. So, yeah, we've got Dr. Sax in there.

There's an immense amount of stuff in the Dossier. A prospectus of London, features upon previous versions of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Les Hommes Mysterieux from France, and Der Zweilicht-helden from Germany. There's an account of The Surrogate League that British Intelligence tried to put together in the 1950s, and which was a complete disaster. There's everything that you could ever want to know about any incarnation of The League. And this is the source book material; this is the actual Black Dossier.

And, wrapped around that and running through that, there are these very lengthy sections of comic strip which tell the story of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, such as it is, basically retrieving the Black Dossier from British Intelligence in 1958. They basically steal the Black Dossier that has got all of these things that British Intelligence know about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen contained in it. Members of The League break into British Intelligence in 1958, steal the Black Dossier, and then try to escape from the country while being pursued by a trio of deadly British agents, who are trying to get them and the Dossier back.

I picked up Baker's book this last week, and it's on the top of my To Read pile. His previous book-length interview with Moore, Alan Moore Spells It Out, was quite good, as I recall, so I've high hopes for this one.

Hey, remember a while back, when I mentioned the return of Captain Carrot to DC Comics? No? Well, I did.

In any case, it looks like he's coming back again.

As announced at New York Comic Con, DC's best known superpowered rabbit will return this year in Captain Carrot and the Final Arc, a three-issue limited series written by Bill Morrison.

Artist Scott Shaw! will return to the characters he helped create with Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway in 1982, when the character first appeared in Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, a free 16-page insert in DC'S New Teen Titans #16. Captain Carrot's Crew then debuted in their own title a month after that insert, featuring characters like a speedster turtle named Fastback, the metallic-skinned Pig Iron, a dog with patriotic powers named Yankee Poodle, and martial arts expert Alley-Kat-Abra -- all fighting beside Captain Carrot with his powerful cosmic carrots.

The little bits of the character we got in the comic-within-a-comic in Teen Titans #30-31 last year were a bit of a mixed bag. Great Scott Shaw art, and the Geoff Johns script worked as a commentary on the too-dark state of current comics, but the result wasn't exactly what you'd call "fun". Bill Morrison's got a great track record in fun comics with his work for Bongo Comics (Radioactive Man and Heroes Anonymous), so there's room for hope. And Morrison's descriptions of what he's got planned certainly sound promising!

Win Eckert sent me this little bit of pulpy goodness, and I just felt the need to share. Sadly, Jess Nevins reports that there isn't a copy of this gem in any library collection, and while copies likely exist in private collections, the story itself isn't available for public consumption.



Still, gorillas and zeppelins. How can you go wrong?

A decent day today, which together with the rest of the week puts me a bit ahead of schedule. I'm about four or five big scenes from the end of "Jubilee," and cooking with gas.



No sample today, as I'm late out the door to go get Georgia from preschool, and most of today's work would be a bit too spoilery, anyway. Suffice to say that the last character of Jubilee has just come onstage, there's a scene with lots of swords hanging on a wall, and sooner or later one of them is going to get taken down and swung around.

The good folks at RevolutionSF have posted an essay I wrote for them, all about how Alan Moore's Miracleman is the best thing ever. Or something like that. It's all part of their ongoing celebration of the Comics of 1986, arguably the best year in comics, ever.

What are the Pollie Awards, you ask? Well, they're awarded by an outfit called the American Association of Political Consultants.

The Pollie Awards are the national showcase for political and public affairs excellence hosted each year by the AAPC. The focus of the Pollies rotates each year between the political and public affairs fields, with this year's Pollies recognizing achievements in the political field.

What some of you may not know is that my wife, Allison Baker, is not just the "brain" part of MonkeyBrain Books, but also holds down a dayjob in the glamorous world of political media consultancy. The company she works for, Joe Slade White & Co, was up for a number of Pollie Awards this year, and it was announced last night that they won, four times!

Here are the four winning spots, which if I'm not mistaken are all part of their successful campaign in the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial race, in which they got the sitting governor Jennifer Granholm re-elected. Naturally, these focus on Granholm's opponent, Dick Devos, heir of the Amway fortune, proponent of intelligent design, and opponent of reproductive rights and stem cell research. Devos lost big, and these spots were a significant part of that.

JSW and Mercury Group
Gold- "See Dick Run"


JSW
Silver - "Lobbyist"


Tied Bronze - "Twins"


Tied Bronze - "Office"

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Lily Allen. I've had her new album in heavy rotation every since, but the other day I discovered she had a new video out I hadn't seen, for the track that's been circling in my head for days. And with puppets, no less.

Consider this me calling my shot. My time is stitched up between now and July, finishing a number of novels already in various stages of completion, but assuming that I don't sell another project in the interim, in August I'm going to start work on Firewalk. This is the story of Susan Kururangi and Nicholas Falen, originally started eight years ago this month as a serial for Clockwork Storybook. I've been toying with the idea of dusting it off and reworking it for the last couple of years, but this morning, sometime between stepping out of the shower and coming downstairs, I figured out that Nick and Susan were part of a larger story that also includes elements from a number of unsold comic book pitches of ancient vintage, and that if I mashed them all up together I'd have an actual novel, instead of just half an idea. So I came downstairs and jotted a few notes in my Moleskin, enough to jog my memory later. And suddenly I find myself committed through the end of the year. Of course, I'll still have to find someone to publish the damned thing, but I'll worry about that later...

Check out this amazing cover for Adam Roberts's Splinter, forthcoming from my new masters at Solaris. I know nothing about the book, except what I've read on the Solaris site, but I'm deeply, deeply envious of that cover.



Update 2/23/07: My masters are Solaris inform me that the cover is based on the first edition of Jules Verne's Hector Servadac, which also inspired the book itself. See the inspiration below, and marvel at how nicely the Solaris prodution folks were able to recreate it's steam-punky greatness.

(via) I found this strangely hypnotic.

(via) Animator Zee Risek has taken the actual audio tracks from Cold War-era propaganda films and remixed them with new animated visuals, and the result is the Z-Files. I'm not sure what's funnier, the new visuals, or the fact that the audio was at one point considered persuasive.

Not hunting chimps, but chimps hunting. The little furry bastards can create novel vocalizations, have complex social organization, use rudimentary tools, and now they hunt with spears? I don't know about the rest of you Homo sapiens, but if you ask me Pan troglodytes is poaching our territory more than a little...

Okay, there are loads of story possibilities in this:

The swirling Arabesque ceramic tiles used in medieval Islamic mosaics and architecture were produced using geometry not understood in the West until the 1970s, a new study suggests.

The inlaid patterned tiles grace the walls of many structures worldwide, in patterns of mind-boggling intricacy called "girih." Historians have always assumed that medieval architects meticulously developed the patterns with basic tools.

But manuals written by the architects to share tricks of the trade actually include model tiles—like geometrical tracings—that helped lay out the complex "girih" designs on a large scale, researchers discovered recently. The efficient system eventually allowed artisans to produce "quasicrystalline" wall patterns—a concept that was discovered by Western mathematicians just three decades ago.

[snip]

Western science couldn't describe the same pattern until the early 1970s, when English mathematician Roger Penrose introduced his famous "Penrose" tiling system.

A decent day. I'm within striking distance of finishing "Jubilee", and will probably be able to wrap it up by sometime early next week. Then I'll spend a few days shifting gears and running errands, and plow on ahead into "Millennium," the third and last act.



Today's writing, a bit more than 5K, covered a lot of ground. A description of Victoria's Jubilee Procession, cribbed shamelessly from Morris's Pax Britannica, a discussion of recent novels of the day, a train journey to Taunton, a visit to the Somerset Archaelogical and Natural History Society, a couple of meals, and a discussion of Welsh mythology and British folklore. Sheesh.

A long sample today, since I couldn't find a good breaking point. Blank and Miss Bonaventure get on a train and read books. Non! Stop! Excitement!!

The trains and stations were congested, with travelers returning home from coming to the city to see the Jubilee Procession, and so it was later that week before Blank and Miss Bonaventure were able to book passage on the Great Western Railway. The journey from London to Taunton was scheduled to take a little under four hours, barring mishap, and so along with their overnight bags the pair brought along novels they’d purchased at a bookstall in the station, to keep themselves entertained en route.

Miss Bonaventure had purchased a recent edition of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte, published the previous year by Chatto & Windus of Piccadilly. Mark Twain was credited as “editor,” but it was apparent that de Conte was himself a fiction, as likely was the Jean Francois Allen who was credited with translating the work from the original French. Blank remembered what Michel had told him about Joan, years before, and on seeing the image of the young girl embossed on the cover, a sword in her hand and a halo round her head, he could not help feeling sorry for the poor thing. It must have been a terrible thing, to have been plagued for so long by voices meant for another’s ear.

For his part, Blank had selected a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published only the month before. From the character’s physical description and mannerisms, it seemed apparent that the author had based his Count upon the thespian Henry Irving, who so often trod the boards at Stoker’s Lyceum. Less apparent, though clearly evident on further reading, was the fact that the author seemed to have been inspired, at least in part, by the real life events of the Torso Killings of the previous decade. When he reached this unsettling conclusion, Blank found his taste for the fiction altogether lost, seeing too easily the skeleton of fact beneath the skin, and so closed the book with an expression of distaste. He remembered the events of those days too well to need reminding of them.

Miss Bonaventure saw him set the book aside, and closed her own book on her finger. “Not Stoker’s best, I take it?” she asked, knowingly.

Blank recovered himself and shook his head. “No, it’s not that. Not to my personal tastes, perhaps, but for a reading public that hungrily devours the exploits of Varney and Sweeney Todd, I’m sure it will be quite appetizing. But I’m afraid that I find myself longing for the more dulcet arabasques of his earlier work. Did you ever read ‘The Crystal Cup’?”

Miss Bonaventure shook her head.

“Published in pamphlet form by the London Society, some years ago. A charming little dream fantasy, though, as Oscar later observed, it could have used quite a bit more fantasy and a touch less dream.”

Miss Bonaventure raised her eyebrow, and Blank realized that he’d said more than he intended.

“Wilde, do you mean?” she asked. “Oh, yes, he and Stoker were both betrothed to the same woman, weren’t they? At different times, of course.”

Blank nodded. “And she’s married to Stoker still, as I understand it.”

“Hmm.” Miss Bonaventure mused. “You know, I’ve always wondered something, and never thought to ask. I know that you’ve served as inspiration for fiction a time or two, with bowdlerized versions of your exploits finding their way into the work of Conan Doyle and Hal Meredith, but it’s always seemed to me that there was a little something of you in Wilde’s Dorian Gray.”

Blank stiffened, almost imperceptibly, but managed to keep his expression neutral, only pursing his lips thoughtfully. “Really?”

“Well, there’s his surname, which is certain suggestive of your habitual shade.” She indicated his suit coat, vest, trousers, and hat, all of a uniform gray. “And the description of Gray’s rooms is certainly reminiscent of your own in York Place. Come to think of it, you’ve both got locked rooms in your upper floors which you refuse to allow anyone to see.” She grinned. “Admit it, Blank. Do you have a portrait secreted away up there, which makes plain all the sins your smooth features conceal?”

Blank knew she was only joking, but he couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably on his seat. “My dear, I’m sure any portrait of me would be perfectly hideous in any event, without the addition of the marks of sin.”

She playfully swatted his knee with her closed book. “There’s a little too much of the dandy in your character for you to wear modesty easily, I’m afraid. But joking aside, you mention Wilde by his Christian name. Were you acquainted?”

Blank’s gaze slid to the corners of their compartment, and found something of interest in the countryside streaming past their window. “We knew each other,” he said at length. “Distantly. For a time.”

Miss Bonaventure took him at his word. With a shrug, she returned to her book, reading about the little girl who heard voices, that drove her to do great things. Blank leaned his head against the cool glass of the window, and closed his eyes, trying to forget that any such voices had ever existed.

Italian artist Maurizio Manzieri has interviewed our own John Picacio for the sf magazine Robot, and has posted an English translation online.

Rick Klaw points out this little gem, from TwoMorrows Publishing.

Comics Gone Ape!, edited by Michael Eury

128 page Trade Paperback - edited by Michael EURY
The Missing Link To Primates In Comics
They may be only one notch below humans on the evolutionary ladder, but gorillas and monkeys have for decades climbed to the top of the comic-book world as heroes and villains, monsters and masterminds, and soldiers and sidekicks. Comics Gone Ape! is the missing link to primates in comics, spotlighting a barrel of simian superstars like Beppo, BrainiApe, the Gibbon, Gleek, Gorilla Man, Grease Monkey, King Kong, Konga, Mojo Jojo, Sky Ape, and Titano. Comics Gone Ape! is loaded with rare and classic artwork, chest-thumping cover galleries, and 11 exclusive interviews with apes artists and writers including Arthur ADAMS (Monkeyman and O’Brien), Frank CHO, Carmine INFANTINO (Detective Chimp, Grodd), Joe KUBERT (Tor, Tarzan), Tony MILLIONAIRE (Sock Monkey), Doug MOENCH (Planet of the Apes), and Bob OKSNER (Angel and the Ape). With its all-new Avengers-as-gorillas cover by Arthur ADAMS, you won’t be able to keep your filthy paws off this book! Written by BACK ISSUE magazine’s Michael EURY.

ISBN: 1-893905-62-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-893905-62-7

I've had Eury's Krypton Companion on the back of the toilet tank upstairs for the last couple of weeks, and found it the perfect bathroom reading. Sounds like Comics Gone Ape will fit nicely in the same category.

A kinda sucky day, especially considering I had a full day to work and still managed to get less done than I did in a half-day yesterday. I should know that whenever I have to consult maps, as I did today, I'm going to lose bags of time. Today it was the better part of an hour figuring out the route someone would take from Marylebone to the Crystal Palace station in Sydenham in 1897. (My best guess: Inner Circle Line from Baker Street Station to Victoria Station on the Underground, then the Crystal Palace Railway from Victoria to Crystal Palace.) Still, having beat my quota on Monday and Tuesday, I'm still ahead of schedule for the week.



Today I finished up with the League of the Round Table, and then brought Mervyn Fawkes onstage. Fawkes, former member of the Royal Geographical Society, is a major character in End of the Century, for all that he doesn't appear on stage until the last half of the middle act (or does he...?). He originally appeared in the short story "Secret Histories: Professor Peter R. Bonaventure, 1885," which can be read in its entirety online, and which was collected in the long-unavailable Cybermany Incorporated. Peter Bonaventure doesn't appear in End of the Century, but his sidekick Jules Dulac does (and there may be a connection between him and the Giles Dulac who figures heavily in the new sections of Set the Seas on Fire). The Peter Bonaventure story, all about British explorers on a floating island in the Atlantic, is a significant piece of backstory for End of the Century, since it introduces so many of the key players in "Jubilee," and explains just what happened to unhinge Fawkes.

Here's a longer sample today, setting up Fawkes's reintroduction in the new story.

The next morning, when Miss Bonaventure arrived at his house in York Place, Blank was hustling out the door to meet her, before she’d even climbed down from the cab.

“Baker Street Station,” Blank called out to the driver, climbing in beside her.

“Going on a journey, are we, Blank?” Miss Bonaventure asked.

“Just a brief excursion, my dear,” Blank said with a smile. “Do you fancy a trip south to Crystal Palace?”

“Lawks!” Miss Bonaventure mimed fanning herself with her hand. “In this heat?”

“Ah, you’re a delicate flower, Miss Bonaventure. Console yourself, though, my dear. Perhaps when our business is concluded you can cool yourself by the waters of the Boating and Fishing Lake.”

At Baker Street, they boarded an Underground train on the Inner Circle line, and as they rumbled through the stifling heat of the tunnels, Blank told Miss Bonaventure what he’d been about, since last they’d parted.

“I was up half the night,” he explained, “digging up what information I could about the Mervyn Fawkes whom the members of the League remembered.”

“What did you find?” Miss Bonaventure asked, now fanning herself in earnest, raising her voice to be heard over the rattle of the train’s wheels over the tracks.

Flashing her a smile, Blank pulled a notebook from an inner pocket of his suit jacket, and in the dim light consulted his notes.

“Mervyn Fawkes. Born 1858, London, the son of a mathematician. Studied geography, cartography, and mathematics at Oxford, where he received a PhD in Geography and Cartography. Later tenured at Cambridge. Fawkes was a junior representative to the Royal Geographical Society on Joseph Thompson’s later expeditions through eastern Africa, and his contribution to the effort were later noted by the Society’s president.”

“Not quite the raving loon of the League’s remembrances, I shouldn’t think,” Miss Bonaventure observed.

“Give him time, my dear, give him time.” Blank returned his attentions to his notes. “Fawkes wrote a monograph entitled ‘On the problem of accurately sounding the depths of the continental shelf and the mid-Atlantic reaches,’ which was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1883. It appears that there was some sort of incident on an expedition for the RGS in 1885, after which Fawkes was briefly a voluntary patient at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. A short while later he left the institution against his doctor’s wishes. He seemed then to develop an interest in philology, of all things. The May 1888 edition of the Modern Language Notes journal contained a letter from Fawkes in the Correspondence section, in response to a essay on the subject of ‘The Old French Merlin’ which ran in the March edition of that year, while the December 1888 edition of the Modern Language Notes journal carried a review by Fawkes on James M. Garnett’s Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Poem.”

“Fascinating reading, I’m sure.”

Blank offered a sly grin. “Given my struggles to remain awake and cogent in the early morning hours as I reviewed the text, I might be forced to disagree. In any event, in the autumn of 1889 there is a record of Fawkes booking passage on a tramp steamer bound for Reykjavik, but no indication that he returned. Not, that is, until he appeared on the employment rolls of the Crystal Palace in late April of this year.”

Miss Bonaventure cocked an eyebrow. “Where, one assumes, he works still?”

Blank’s grin broadened. “So it would appear.”

She nodded, appreciatively. “Fair enough. I think a brief foray is justified, to see what our Mr. Fawkes has to tell us.”

“My thinking exactly, Miss Bonaventure.”

I forgot to mention it last week, but Friday marked the second anniversary of the Interminable Ramble. In the last year, I've written two novels and more than half of a third, sold five novels, written a handful of short stories and sold all but one, been nominated for three awards and lost all three, travelled to six cities in two states, published six books, read lots (including tons of space opera novels, stacks of books on Arthurian mythology and British history, thirty-three novels by Michael Moorcock, and far too many superhero comics), and watched endless hours of television, most of it aimed at a preschool audience. I had a little better luck this last year seeing the forest for the trees than I did the year before, though I still ended up wih a far amount of splinters along the way. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next year has in store...

A fine day's work, especially considering I lost a bit of time this morning to housekeeping.



Tomorrow I introduce (or reintroduce, rather) Mervyn Fawkes, about whom more later. Today, I brought onstage the surviving members of the League of the Round Table, William Blake "Little Bill" Taylor, Lord Arthur Carmody, and Lady Priscilla Anna Strangways née Dumaresq.

Blank and Miss Bonaventure found themselves a short while later standing before the return address listed on the envelope for W.B. Taylor, which was revealed to be a modest residence in Paddington. Ringing the bell, they were greeted at the door by Taylor himself.

If Blank had formed an impression of the man based on hearing a few lines of correspondence read aloud, his impression had struck far of the mark. The man who stood before them, towering some inches above himself and Miss Bonaventure, looked like he’d just stepped from the pages of a penny dreadful. Broad-shouldered, with large, long-fingered hands, he had long drooping mustaches, a small pointed beard on his chin, and wore his hair brushing the color. On his feet were western-style boots, and a string-tie was knotted at his neck.

“Mr. Taylor?” Blank began.

“Look,” barked the man in the doorway in a brusque American accent, “if you’ve come on Cody’s say-so, you can go hang, and to thunder with Cody!”

Blank smiled. “You’re American.”

“Hell, no!” Taylor snapped. “I’m from Texas.”

A decent day today, which is kind of surprising for a Monday. Covered more ground than I'd anticipated by adopting a kind of elliptical approach to some of the longer bits of dialogue, which is kind of narrative shortcut but works well with the faux-Victorian style of the voice. I'm looking forward to the (essentially) modern day section, "Millennium," which is set in 2000, when I can get away with a much looser narrative structure.



I note with distracted interested that the wordcount looks like some kind of numerical palindrome: 78987. Of course, it'll happen again at 80008, 81018, 81118, and so on, so it's hardly that surprising. You'll have to forgive me, I'm a little loopy on antihistamines.

I'm within a day or two of introducing all of the players in "Jubilee", after which point it'll be a question of killing them off, one by one, and revealing which one is the killer. These kinds of stories always seem to end up drenched in blood, don't they?

The next morning, Blank was awoken from a much needed and protracted slumber by someone ringing his front door bell. Pulling on a Japanese dressing gown of black silk embroidered with red and gold, making it the most colorful item of clothing in his current wardrobe, Blank left his sleeping chamber, crossed the library, and entered the foyer. Opening the door, he found a telegraph boy at the threshold, in a crisp brown uniform and matching cap, a leather satchel over his shoulder. The slip of paper the boy presented was from Superintended Melville, and in abbreviated words indicated that there had been a discovery in the early morning hours behind the Tivoli Music Hall that Blank was certain to find of interest.

Blank tipped the boy, shut the door, and returned to his bedchamber to bathe and dress. Melville had been circumspect in the details of his communiqué, but it was clear from reading between the lines that the so-called Jubilee Killer had likely struck again.

Without calling ahead to warn her, Blank knocked on the door of Number 9, Bark Place. When Mrs. Pool answered the door, a barely-concealed scowl of disapproval at finding him standing on the step, he said, “Kindly give these to your mistress,” and handed her the bouquet of long-stemmed white roses he’d purchased on the way. Tucked in between the stems, speared on one of the longer thorns was a card.

Mrs. Pool left Blank standing in the entryway, and in moments Miss Bonaventure was standing at the top of the stairs in a nightgown, the roses in one hand, the card in the other. “‘Miss Bonaventure, we are needed’,” she read aloud. She smiled. “Blank, why do I get the impression that your gift of flowers arrives with some strings attached?”

Mrs. Pool, scandalized at her employer appearing before gentleman caller in such a state of undress—practically naked—stuck her head out from around the corner and glared at them, before ducking back out of sight.

“Well, Miss Bonaventure, I’m afraid that I must interrupted your much deserved rest. It appears that our friend the Jubilee Killer has been busy.”

Over on Comics Should Be Good, Greg Hatcher has worked out that "Chris Roberson, Publisher of MonkeyBrain" and "Chris Roberson, Writer" are the same person as "Chris Roberson, guy who comments on his blog." He goes on to say nice things about the MonkeyBrain Books line, which is always nice to hear.

A short day today, as I lost part of the morning to MonkeyBrain business, and have to knock off early to pick up Georgia from school before my folks arrive from out of town. But a decent day, for all of that. I didn't make my daily quota, but got close enough that I managed to end the week where I needed to be.



Today Blank and Miss Bonaventure investigated the unfortunate death of Xenophon Brade, which necessitated a quick stop on the Necropolis express.

They found the body of the late Xenophon Brade in a simple unvarnished wooden casket. A label at the casket’s head indicated that the body was bound for the Noncomformist section of the Brookwood Cemetery, rather than the more fashionable Anglican areas. That suggested something of the character of the man inside, whose background they would investigate after viewing his remains.

Also suggestive was the fact that the dead man rode to his reward in the second class section. Just as on the trains of living passengers that departed from nearby Waterloo with clockwork regularity, on the Necropolis line there were provisions for first, second, and third class travel, not only for the dead but for their mourners as well. No one, it seemed, accompanied the body of Brade to his final rest, his bank having followed the instructions in his last will and testament, paid for the travel and final accommodations. Here was a man who, on the face of it, had gathered few associations in life, and who now joined a select company in death—the victims of the newly-christened Jubilee Killer. But it occurred to Blank that Brade might well have had other acquaintances and friends, who had elected not to appear beside him at the time of his interment. This was another matter to investigate.

The conductor, who had escorted the pair to the second class compartment, raised an objection when Blank asked Miss Bonaventure to open the casket, but the judicious application of some subvocal harmonics and suggestive words had been sufficient to quiet the conductor’s complaints. Blank had not even been forced to draw one of his calling cards from his pocket.

So it was, then, that in short order the lid to the plain wooden box had been pried away, and the body within lay revealed. Laying on his back, he might just have been slumbering, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes heavy lidded, but for the fact that his skin was lifeless and gray. The dead man had an unruly shag of hair atop a long, high-cheekboned face, his nose patrician, and his finger at the ends of his long hands were thin and delicate. To all appearances he had been redressed in the same clothes in which he had died, following the post-mortem, there being new vents and cuts scissored into the fabric of his jacket, shirt, and trousers, then hastily restitched by the mortician while preparing him for the grave.

The body exposed, there remained the gruesome task of rolling it over, to expose the wound on the dead man’s back. Miss Bonaventure, wiping the palms of her hands on the fabric of her skirt, dusty from the exertion of prizing the coffin lid open, shook her head, resolute. “Don’t look at me,” she said, holding up her hands, protectively. “You want to see his back, you turn him over.”

Okay, I'll admit it. John McCain had me completely snowed in 2000, and continued to keep me duped for years following. Some have accused him of lurching to the right recently, but I think he's just been incredibly skilled at pandering to a progressive audience in certain situations (cf. The Daily Show) while continuing to appeal to a right-wing-religious base. Just check out the dizzying array of mutual contradictory positions he's taken over the years.

Now, he's gone beyond the pale. He's delivering a keynote address at the Discovery Institute, the think-tank spearheading the Creationist drive back to the middle ages.

Cartoon Network has revealed a sheaf of new shows, some of which look like utter drek, and some of which look like they'll be quite watchable. There's the animated series based on the life of Mexican wrestler and real-life superhero, Santos, for one. And then there's this little gem from Jay Stephens.

Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday are a family of world-saving adventure scientists in The Secret Saturdays, a new comedy-action series created by Jay Stephens. The Saturdays live in a hidden base and are part of a network of scientists who protect people from all the hidden and terrifying things in this world. Traveling the hot globe, they explore ancient temples and bottomless caves and tangle with twisted villains, including the masked madman V.V. Argost and his half-human/half-giant spider. "Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday are a family of world-saving adventure scientists in The Secret Saturdays, a new comedy-action series created by Jay Stephens. The Saturdays live in a hidden base and are part of a network of scientists who protect people from all the hidden and terrifying things in this world. Traveling the hot globe, they explore ancient temples and bottomless caves and tangle with twisted villains, including the masked madman V.V. Argost and his half-human/half-giant spider.

Shame on you if you don't know Jay Stephens. His work is made of pure awesome. As I've said before, Stephens is responsible for some of the funniest things ever committed to paper. Previous Stephens creations to get the animated treatment were Jetcat and Tutenstein, but it sounds like Secret Saturdays might be more in line with things like Atomic City Tales, or all-ages adventure shows like Jonny Quest. I'm looking forward to checking it out!

Update 2/19/07: Jay Stephens has posted a note about the show, and provided a couple of promotional images.



He also quoted from the press release, which gives a bit fuller description of the concept: "THE SECRET SATURDAYS: Jay Stephens has created a new comedy/action series, in which Doc, Drew and Zak Saturday are a family of world-saving adventure scientists called The Secret Saturdays. Living in a hidden base, they are part of a network of scientists who protect against all the hidden and terrifying things in this world. To The Saturdays, ordinary folktales aren’t just legends -- they are real-life mysteries and adventures. Traveling from the hot Gobi Desert to the icy Marianas Trench, they explore ancient temples and bottomless caves and tangle with twisted villains like the masked madman V.V. Argost and his half-human/half-giant spider."

What's not to love?

(via) LiveScience debunks The Most Popular Myths in Science, all of which sf writers will want to avoid. (One of the things that turned me off of Heroes immediately was hearing the "scientist" in the opening scenes of the pilot spouting a long-disproven myth from this very list... to say nothing of the fact that he invoked the notion of the gods "creating man in their own image," a concept with very little cultural currency in a Hindu nation.)

Another decent day today. Just a few words short of 5K, and reached a nice stopping point just in time to knock off this afternoon.

It looks like Zokutou may have gone belly up, so unless they've just had a service hiccup, I may have to find a new progress meter. It looks like Writertopia.com has one that seems serviceable, which I'll use until something better comes along.



Today's writing included a bit of martial arts (in a scene heavily inspired by "The Talons of Weng Chiang"), a brief tour of the East End, and a confrontation with Quexi, the mistress of crime known as the Ghost Fox, within her stronghold deep underground beneath the streets of Limehouse (which, if anything, is even more inspired by "Weng Chiang").

To the laundrymen’s continued dismay, the abduction persisted in failing to follow the accepted script. The four Chinese gentlemen, one rubbing an aching jaw and another a sore pate, lingered in the foyer of the York Place house while Blank repaired to his octagonal bedroom, bathed, and dressed. Miss Bonaventure, for her part, hired a cab and rode home, to do the same.

Three quarters of an hour later, Miss Bonaventure returned, to find Blank in the library having a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and trying unsuccessfully to engage their would-be abductors in conversation.

“I suggested that we might all have breakfast before going on,” Blank said, brightly, “but they’d have none of it.”

Miss Bonaventure shrugged. “I’ll confess I grabbed a quick bite of the meal Mrs. Pool had prepared for me, so I’ll survive until lunch, I think.”

“Splendid!” Blank clapped his hands, and strode to the foyer, where he retrieved his bowler hat and cane from the table. Then, carefully selecting an orchid from the vase, he affixed it to his button hole, and turned to smile at the laundrymen. “We’re ready when you are, gentlemen.”

The quartet of laundrymen, exchanging dark glances, shuffled out through the foyer, eyeing Miss Bonaventure warily.

Tomorrow, the tragic story of Xenophon Brade...

Look, if you're not going to hire better (and funnier) writers, at least get someone a little more skilled and subtle to work the laugh track levels.



(Update: Allison points out that I didn't actually say what this was. It's Fox News's "answer" to the Daily Show. And now I have.)

An intersting article on New Scientist about the possibilities of adapting a protein found in the human ear (and not just in the ear, but in ear hair) to help provide power to spacesuits.

Astronauts' spacesuits may one day be covered in motion-sensitive proteins that could generate power from the astronauts' movement, according to futuristic research being conducted by a new lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. Such "power skins" could also be used to coat future human bases on Mars, where they could produce energy from the Martian wind.

Cool, no? The article then goes on to provide a bit of detail.

They are focusing on a protein called prestin, which is found in the outer hair cells of the human ear. In the cell membranes of these cells, prestin converts electrical voltage into motion, elongating and contracting the cell. This movement amplifies sound in the ear.

However, prestin can also work in reverse, producing electrical charges in response to mechanical stresses, such as tiny vibrations. Each protein is only capable of making nanowatts of electricity, but Matthew Silver and Kranthi Vistakula, both of IntAct Labs, believe that many proteins used together may be able to power small devices or help charge a battery.

In the short term, the researchers aim to prove their concept by using prestin to create a small vibration sensor that can generate a detectable charge.

But eventually, they say networks of the proteins could form 'power skins' to coat spacesuits or even buildings on the Red Planet, where gusts of wind would activate the proteins.

To increase conductivity, the researchers say they may even integrate certain types of microbes into the power skins. Geobacter bacteria sprout hair-like surface appendages, called pili, that have been shown to act as nano-wires capable of conducting electricity to an electrode (see Bacterial electronics). Their pili could similarly be used to transfer the electrons generated by prestin through the power skins, says Silver.

Space suits covered in ear-hair proteins and microbes. Not quite a transsuit, but I dig it!

A decent day's work, which would likely be better if I didn't have to knock off early to do a bit of emergency grocery shopping before picking Georgia up from preschool (I've run out of tea bags, and anyone who's spent any amount of time with me knows that can't be allowed to happen). Even so, I managed to do a bit under 4.5K today. I'm tempted not to push much beyond 5K a day for the rest of "Jubilee," for fear that the plot will run away with me if I don't stop and mull it over every now and again, and it'll run even longer than it's already threatening to do.

65,412 / 120,000 (54.5%)

Blank and Miss Bonaventure did a bit of sleuthing today, after talking a bit about William Blake and his poetry on their ride through Lambeth.

It had been nearly ten years since Blank was last on the grounds of Lambeth’s asylum for the blind. The arm of a woman had been found there, apparently the mate to another arm found floating in the Thames at Pimlico two weeks before, and both apparently the property of the limbless torso discovered on the building site of the New Scotland Yard two weeks further on. It had been the Torso Killer’s second victim, and the killer had gone to special lengths to scatter the puzzle pieces far and wide.

Now, nearly a decade later, the School for the Indigent Blind was once again the site of a gruesome discovery, but this time, instead of a lonely arm, it had been an entire torso, albeit one limbless and headless.

Blank and Miss Bonaventure were met at the school gate by an attendant who, unlike his charges, was quite definitely sighted. And on seeing the approach of two strangers, however well turned out they may have been, so soon after the unpleasant discoveries of the previous week, the attendant seemed in no eager mood to allow them admittance.

I found this pretty amusing, in a Mystery Men sort of way (though, now that I think about it, it's actually more in line with The Specials).

Today sucked. The outline for "Jubilee" is incredibly detailed, with one or two patchy bits. Today I hit one of the patchy bits. Somehow I had to turn the sentence "Sandford and Roxanne begin to investigate the murders" into four or five thousand words of narrative, chock full of useful backstory, some of which I'd only worked out in sketchy detail. Joy! I spent hours pouring over 19C maps, researching what sort of fabric women's summer walking dresses would be make of, and trying to work out just where in Lambeth the School for the Indigent Blind had been, anyway.

60,935 / 120,000 (50.8%)

If you can't tell from looking, I did only a bit more than 3K words today, which is far shy of my daily goal, and my worst full day of writing to date on this one. Yeesh. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better. I've got only a couple of scenes to go before I bring the Ghost Fox on stage. Chinese Triads in the Limehouse! Hurray!

The high point of day's writing was the bit where Roxanne changes clothes in the afternoon. Non! Stop! Action!

The driver let them off in front of Number 9, Bark Place, and while Miss Bonaventure climbed the steps to her door, fishing in her reticule for the front door key, Blank paid the driver, enjoying the relative silence of the block. Bark Place was a short road just off Bayswater Road, near the Orme Square Gate of Kensington Garden, whose green leaves could be seen just the other side of Orme Court. With the serene quiet of Kensington on one side, and the relatively sedate bustle of Moscow Road on the other, Bark Place was as a consequence inordinately quiet, even in contrast with the relative calm that hung like a heavy blanket over the whole of Bayswater. Blank had once remarked to Miss Bonaventure that it seemed hardly a fitting place of residence for a “New Woman” such as herself, who was as likely to go for a bicycling tour of the countryside as she was to stay at home knitting doilies, and was more skilled in arts martial than marital. He had difficulty imagining her in a typical domestic setting; but then, he had difficulty imagining a typical domestic setting, full stop, given his scant experience with them, so that was probably hardly surprising. In response, Miss Bonaventure had simply explained that the signal feature of Bayswater, and Bark Place in particular, was that it changed little with the passing years, being now virtually identical to the street it had been almost half a century before, and promised to remain unchanged for centuries to come.

Of course, Blank had known perfectly well that Miss Bonaventure had her own reasons for desiring that sort of immutable permanence in a residence, but he had no desire to queer their friendship, and refrained from mentioning it. After all, who was he to begrudge someone their secrets?

Blank waited in Miss Bonaventure’s study, on the first floor up, while she was upstairs in her bedroom, getting dressed. Mrs. Pool, the day maid, had sniffed audibly on seeing Blank accompanying her mistress, evidently disapproving of the notion that an unmarried woman should spend so much time in the company of an unmarried man, but had accompanied Miss Bonaventure upstairs without comment.

Blank passed the time scanning the spines of the books on Miss Bonaventure’s shelves. Her collection was impressive, as catholic in its breadth as it was detailed in its depth. There also seemed to be, Blank noted with amusement, a small number of titles which had not, as yet, been published.

A decent day, not great. Spent last Thursday and Friday working on a few new chapters for the expanded Set the Seas on Fire, so I wasn't completely out of practice by this morning, but spent all day yesterday laid up with some sort of flu, which has left me with a sore throat and some sort of weird typing aphasia, that means that I keep typing the wrong word in a sentence. When typing "He leaned on his cane, his hands folded," I end up typing "He leaned on his hands, his hands folded." I must have done this twenty times today, at least that I caught. Lots of sentences that made sense in my head, and that lost something in the translation to the page. I've gone through and fixed as many as I could find, but I'm sure there's more. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll have the cobwebs shaken out, and can be back up to speed.

57,883 / 120,000 (48.2%)

Today's sample comes from the opening of "Jubilee," introducing Sandford Blank and Roxanne Bonaventure.

The light of the late morning sun streamed through the open shutters of the sitting room, dust motes dancing in the beam, while the bones of the breakfast meal idled on the table. The lilting tones of a flute echoed from the paneled walls, an improvised air on the tune of one of Child’s border ballads of Scotland, played by the man who leaned against the mantle, his eyes closed and his expression serene. The woman at the table, intent on the morning’s penny papers, tapped her foot in time, unconscious of the action. It was early June, and outside the temperature already climbed, the Marylebone streets bustling with the morning’s trade and traffic, but within the walls of Number 31, York Place, it was still relatively calm and cool. For the moment, at any rate.

There were some, even in this enlightened modern age, who might have considered it untoward that a man and a woman should pass the time together unchaperoned, which unmarried couples could not do without inviting comment, and which married couples seldom did at all. But this particular man, and this singular woman, rarely bothered themselves with what others might say about them, individually or collectively, and hardly gave the matter a moment’s consideration.

From Steve Wilson's My Elves Are Different (not this Steve Wilson, but this Steve Wilson), a sentiment I've found myself sharing from time to time.

(via) It is what it says. The original is here if you've never seen it (and you should, if you haven't, unless you hate goodness or something).

One of the feeds included in my bloglines subscription list is Netflix's list of new releases. Speaking as someone who only went to the cinema three times in the last calendar year, that's pretty much the only way I'm able to keep anything like current. In amongst the new release blag, though, there are always some hidden gems. Which brings me to these two selections.

Note, that I'm not making any comment about the respective quality of these two films, which I've not seen, nor of the intentions of the filmmakers. It may well be that the Netflix descriptions don't do these justice, and they're much better than these brief paragraphs would suggest. You've got to admit, though, that based on the descriptions alone, these two flicks clearly belong in that hazy no-man's-land between awesome and ass.

Android Apocalypse
Jute (Scott Bairstow), a disgruntled human soldier displaced by the advancement of androids, is sent to prison for illegally terminating a robot -- and, ironically, soon finds himself depending on a robot for survival. Android soldier Deecee (Joseph Lawrence) is being shipped to the same prison colony, and when their transport ship is suddenly attacked by mutants, Jute and Deecee must work as a team to stay alive.

That's right. It's The Defiant Ones, but with a human and an android. And with mutants instead of state troopers. Or something like that. You've got to wonder about a society that imprisons androids, though...

Devil's Den
Making their way back from Mexico with a precious stock of Spanish fly, Quinn Taylor (Devon Sawa) and his best friend, Nick (Steven Schub), decide to stop off at a gentleman's club to test their product on the female employees, only to discover that the ladies are anything but human. Things go from bad to worse when they realize they're being hunted by a sexy female assassin (Kelly Hu), a Japanese swordsman and the devil himself.

I don't even know where to start. I'll just let the words "sexy female assassin", "Japanese swordsman", and "the devil himself" speak for themselves.

Look, you owe it to yourself and the ones you love to pick up Paul Benjamin and Steven & Megumi Cummings's new TokyoPop series, Pantheon High. It's what the kids call OEL Manga ("Original English Language"), which essentially means it's a story in manga style and format done by American creators, in English. The target audience is "Older Teen (Age 16+)", but I found it a great deal of fun, even though I'm easily a couple of decades past that mark.



Pantheon High is unquestionably the Citizen Kane of high-school-for-demigods stories, and I'll arm-wrestle anyone who says different. Absolutely charming, with moments of genuine humor, real suspense, and loads of cleverness, it's really much better that it has any right to be. Don't believe me? Chek out Publishers Weekly's review, which describes the book as "Stunning in its ambition", a "one-of-a-kind work that entertains with intelligence and humor." None to shabby, no?

I was pleasantly reminded of Sidekicks, though Pantheon High is a bit more over the top than J. Torres and Takeshi Miyazawa's school for superheroes (in a good way). I suppose I was also reminded of Hero High and Galaxy High and any number of other high-school-for-extraordinary-kids sorts of stories, but then I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

The basic plot is simple, deceptively so, and to recount it in any detail would spoil too many surprises, to suffice to say that the action spans one day in the life of a bunch of high school age demigods, and while at the outset it seems like it will be a sort of mythological John Hughes flick, with tensions between the popular kids, the outsiders, the geeks, the jocks -- which it is, have no doubt -- it quickly becomes apparent that a more sinister story is unfolding.

The first volume ends with some annotations on the mythological references, which will no doubt prove useful to kids approaching this sort of material for the first time, and with a preview of volume 2, which makes me eager for its release (the brief: our heroes have to temporarily transfer to the rival high school for demigods, full of Aztec, Indian, Babylonian, and Polynesian pantheons, where the kids at their own school are predominately Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and Japanese, as near as I can tell).

I'd love to hear Chris Nakashima-Brown, Jess Nevins, Greg Hatcher, and the Groovy Age of Horror's Curt debate which is the best flavor and era of pulp fiction. I don't know that I'd entirely agree with any of them (or rather, I'd agree with all of them, in part), but you've got to know that the argument would be worth hearing.

Paul Cornell has posted an interesting