STUFF MATTERS: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik tackles a variety of topics centering on the materials that surround us: how can a paperclip made of metal bend but not break? How can pure carbon appear as diamonds but also the graphite in pencils? Why does paper fold so well? What makes chocolate so good? Plus chapters on concrete, gels and glass.An interesting work
In the fourth Father Brown collection (I meant to read #3 first but I got it wrong), Father brown is visiting his friend Flambeau, thief-turned-detective, now happily married and retired, when one of the other guests asks THE SECRET OF FATHER BROWN — how is it possible he solves so many cases? Father Brown replies that he imagines what might drive him to commit a given murder, then reasons who would have the same motive … which doesn’t to fit the series at all, at least not to me. The stories themselves are fair but not great, other than “The Chief Mourner of Marne,” which I really like. Also Chesterton’s insights feel off, like asserting suburban residents have no interest in gossiping about their neighbors.
I’ve had ENIGMA, an eight-issue Vertigo series by Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo, on my “to read” list for a while. Discovering it available through my library’s Hoopla service, I checked it out … and didn’t finish it. Protagonist Michael Smith is shocked, utterly shocked when the Enigma and the Brain pop out of one of his beloved childhood comics — what can it possibly mean? After three issues of pretension (did you know killing a fly proves there is no god?) I gave up, flipped to the end, found I hadn’t missed anything.
Cover by Fegredo, all rights remain with current holders.
I’m not sure when I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s THE MISMEASURE OF MAN — the 1980s, maybe? — but it certainly hasn’t aged at all.
Gould looks back at the long history of efforts to measure human intelligence and to rank it, not merely between individuals but between groups — man vs. woman, black vs. white vs. Native American vs. Aborigine, native-born American vs. immigrant, upper class vs. lower. Why yes, there was a lot of racism involved; even people who were enlightened and liberal routinely accepted that the white Anglo-Saxon male was the summit of human evolution and obviously more intelligent than anyone else. Knowing this unsurprisingly biased the results. The great anatomist Paul Broca, for instance, admitted that women’s brains were smaller than men’s in proportion to their bodies but obviously, as we know women are stupid, their small brains must be the root cause.
Gould argues the fatal mistake in all the theorists he’s covering was the belief that intelligence was a single, fixed, quantifiable thing (a concept that eventually became “IQ”) and that it was an identifiable physical property of the brain, untainted by education, culture, environment, etc. And that attempts to measure it were always undone by bias; when it became obvious that IQ tests of immigrants reflected how long they’d been in America (and therefore exposed to American culture) the response was that obviously the immigrants who arrived earlier were the smarter, more ambitious types and the later arrivals were the degenerate dregs. This is wonkier than his previous books, getting much more into the technical weeds than they did, but it certainly makes its point well.
WILL EISNER’S NEW YORK is an anthology of multiple smaller works by the creator of the Spirit, all focusing on life in the Big Apple. One section tells stories built around windows, fire hydrants and other features of city life. Another looks at four ghosts haunting the site of the building where they died, even though it’s been demolished and replaced. “Invisible People” looks at the ways people can vanish in the teeming crowds; one, concerning a recluse who can’t convince anyone his obituary was wrong (they’ve never seen him, how do they know who he is?), shows similars fears of loss-of-identity to The Net.
It’s great stuff but not Eisner’s best stuff. Like his Life in Pictures, the tone is too bleak and miserable, plus the women are overwhelmingly unlikable and unsympathetic. It’s surprising, given the women of Eisner’s Spirit series are far more interesting and appealing.
Although the publisher lists Henry Kuttner as sole author of FURY, CL Moore says in the introduction that she collaborated on it (they did lots of work on each other’s stories throughout their marriage); Kuttner’s mark is on the Don’t Trust Authority scenes, hers on the Don’t Trust Love moments. Their story dissatisfied me as a teen, probably because it’s about an anti-hero against a decaying society and I wasn’t really ready for that. And Sam, “who was born into a world he had to smash before it smashed him,” isn’t a typical anti-hero.
Following the nuclear destruction of Earth, the survivors escaped to Venus and settled in domed colony cities under the Venusian oceans. A minority of people, affected by radiation, become immortal, and eventually rule the cities. They can be killed but they have advantages: decades of added experience and knowledge and the ability to make long-range plans. They’re also cautious: the confined, unchanging environment of the cities is destroying humanity’s spirit but the Immortals are unwilling to gamble on the long, dangerous challenge of colonizing the hostile Venusian surface land.
Sam was born an immortal but his mother died giving birth to him. His bitter father had Sam brought up among the lower classes. Sam becomes a tough, dangerous criminal, then slowly gains ambition, leading to throwing his weight behind the land-colonization efforts. The Immortals don’t know what to make of him but hope they can either use him or destroy him. And why does it sometimes seem there’s a guiding hand manipulating everything? There’s a lot of interesting ideas in this novel, and Sam makes a memorable protagonist, a guy who’s doing a good job but lacks many of the ennobling qualities anti-heroes often have.
Fury cover uncredited, top cover by Eisner. All rights to images remain with current holders.
If you imagine distracting events as the axe-men Luke Cage is busting on this cover —
— then unlike last week, the third axe-man did me in. Almost nothing got done this week.
I knew it wouldn’t be a stellar week because TYG had an out-of-town trip which left me with all the dog care (not a criticism of her — she does the same when I go out of town). Still it wouldn’t have been too bad, except early Sunday morning Trixie’s UTI returned. Peeing on the bed does tend to rob one of sleep. Monday I had to take her in; the vet confirmed it’s a different bacterial soup inside her from last time. This could mean some bacteria got antibiotic resistance or that her equipment is looser and weaker., leading to incontinence. Either way it’s treatable.
Happily the UTI doesn’t seem to affect anything else. She’s lively, up for walks, eats, snuggles. No small thing.
In the short term, however, I got minimal sleep Saturday and Sunday night (she got up early Monday morning too). Then Monday night I was too stressed with worry to sleep well and felt half-dead Tuesday. Need I say I didn’t get much done? Wednesday was better but not much better. TYG returned and I got more sleep Wednesday night. However Thursday I was still tired and we had a recheck for Trixie to go to.
Result? Almost nothing done. Some work on Savage Adventures and a final review of my two stories for Become the Sky. We’re shooting to get it done next month so that has to be a priority.
However, as I’ve blogged about several times over the years, some bad weeks are inevitable. Sooner or later you hit a week where everything goes wrong. This ain’t the first. Won’t be the last. The solution is to do better next week. This will be a little challenging — three different medical appointments for various things — but I shall do my best to rise to the challenge.
To end on a plus note, I sold several copies of various books so as always, thank you buyers! Hope you enjoyed them.
Cover by Billy Graham. All rights to image remain with current holders.
The Genre Book Club’s topic for September was “banned classics.” As I didn’t feel like reading anything heavy, I went with THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ because yes, it has been banned occasionally — most notably in the 1950s, on the grounds Ozma making sure no-one in her country goes hungry was communist propaganda! And I love the Oz series, so why not?
I’m guessing nobody reading this needs me to explain the story. Suffice to say, the book remains charming, both Baum’s story and W.W. Denslow’s delightful art (below) — though disagreements with Baum led to John R. Neill taking over as illustrator of Oz for most of the series.
What’s most remarkable is that Baum makes me believe in Oz. There’s no world-building, no magic system, yet everything works. When Dorothy and her friends wander into a country of living China dolls late in the book, there’s no set up, nothing that explains why this exists in Oz, but I don’t doubt that it does. That is way harder than it looks.
As a fan of the series as a whole, it’s also interesting to see how the beginning differed from what followed. The implication here is that Oz is an isolated area in the American wilderness, something not implausible in 1900 (Ozma of Oz establishes Oz is its own continent). The deadly desert that surrounds Oz is simply a desert here; later books establish it’s lethal to touch it. Oz appears to be the name of the wizard, not the country. But regardless of such Oz-nerdery, this is a wonderful book.
THE WIZARD OF OZ CATALOG: L. Frank Baum’s Novel, It’s Sequels, and Their Adaptations for Stage, Television, Movies, Radios, Music Videos, Comic Books, Commercials and More was my second book for McFarland (it’s still available) and my best seller: as I guessed when I proposed it, interest in Oz drew a lot of attention.
Rereading it now, it suffers from the fact so many of the adaptations have the same basic plot (something I handled better in Watching Jekyll and Hyde, I think). However it’s still an impressive, exhaustive job. And it’s fascinating to be reminded of the Oz legend’s global reach with Australian, English, Turkish, Russian, Brazilian and Japanese adaptations and spinoffs; of the nerdy enthusiasm of fanfic authors for giving even the most obscure characters their own stories; and the many strange takes out there such as Ken Kesey’s Twister, described as “the single weirdest production in this book, and that’s saying something.”
It’s also amazing how flexible the Oz story is. Take one person who’s stupid (or thinks they are), one person who’s heartless and a third whose cowardly and people know what’s going down. I’ve seen that adapted to sales videos, How To Use The Library training films, and a Fantasy Island episode.
You know, these axemen. I’ve posted this Billy Graham cover before because it sums up the way life keeps bushwhacking us just when we think we’re out from under. There were more axemen this week than expected but like the first week of September, the work got done.
A lot of the distractions were paperwork, like submitting for our dogs various recent vet visits, ordering fresh dog drugs, etc. There was also tiredness due to Trixie’s drug regimen keeping up up late to get the last ones in. Her UTI and her GI issues have resolved themselves, though, and the drugs are done. However she developed a slightly shaky left rear leg so we have an appointment this Saturday. It’s nothing serious but it’s definitely not normal — I don’t want to wait for serious discomfort like we did with the GI bleed.
Despite the leg, she’s 100 percent better from last weekend. Hungry, bouncy, eager to play, willing to walk and just more her usual self. Dudley too is in good shape. We had his rehab recheck Monday and the vet gushed over the great shape he’s in for nearly 16. Yay Dudders, yay vet, yay us for taking good care.
Overall life was nowhere near as intense as last week. However it was intense enough I didn’t really get to draw breath, either.
So, walk. As one of my October articles for The Local Reporter is a listicle of Carrboro nonprofits I spent Monday researching them. There’s quite a lot for a small town so it’s a good thing I started. I imagine I’ll break them down into different groupings (kid-related, sports, arts, charity, etc.) when I write it next week.
I’ve proofed The Savage Adventures through 1937 which is about 45 percent of the book done. Having reread the second draft of Let No Man Put Asunderlast week, I began planning Draft Three. That meant reading a lot of articles about rewriting, developing character arcs, etc., then starting work on Paul and Mandy’s character arcs (details next week). That was very productive; hopefully the work will translate into a smooth, faster-than-usual draft.
My two stories for the Become the Sky anthology have gotten two rounds of editing so I made changes Thursday. This took longer than expected so I didn’t write anything further. However the critiques were really good and the stories are stronger for it. So yay. If all goes well we’ll have this out before year’s end so you can decide for yourself.
Oh, and my sensitive teeth appear to be getting back to normal so maybe a crown won’t be necessary. Hurray! Second hurray, I sold another copy of Southern Discomfort. Whoever you were, thank you — I hope you enjoy it.
After I wrote the first draft of this post, I realized something else about this week: I’m waaaaay more focused than I have been in a while. I’m having no trouble concentrating on my work and only wandering off to check BlueSky (or whatever) occasionally. That hasn’t been the case in … a while? I’m not sure what changed but hopefully I can keep it up next week (much chaotic stuff to deal with, details next Friday). Because it feels good.
Even though I was dead broke in the early 1980s, I was still buying comics. Mostly DC, though; even though Marvel’s Epic line of creator-owned books looked interesting, it was more expensive and well, Marvel. Perhaps the most interesting was Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar — a science fiction comic written and drawn by the same guy who did such amazing things with Adam Warlock? Had I had the money … Recently I discovered THE DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 1 was available via the Hoopla library service and I decided to see what I’d missed.
The opening arc, Metamorphosis Odyssey is quite a ride. Akhnaton of the ancient, wise Osirosians, realizes the relentlessly warlike Zygoteans will inevitably conquer the galaxy, subjugating every other race to slavery and then death. To prevent that he gathers a team of unlikely heroes to obtain the Infinity Horn, the one device that can avert the doom. And it does, though the solution is … drastic.
A million years later, Akhnaton and his ally Vanth Dreadstar, wielder of a powerful mystic sword, arrive in another galaxy. After Akhnaton’s death, Vanth settles down to peaceful married life …until his new homeworld is caught in the long war between the Monarchy and the Instrumentality (a religion as ruthless as the Magus’ Church of Universal Truth in Warlock). Vanth was ready to quit but they dragged him back in … and now he and his new team are out to end the war and avenge his wife’s death.
A post on Tom Brevoort’s blog said the transition from the initial story to the Dreadstar series felt like the transition of Marvel from the unconventional era of Starlin’s Warlock and Captain Marvel to the Jim Shooter era when editorial control was far more rigid. Metamorphosis Odyssey is wild; the subsequent series much less so. It has none of the visionary cosmic quality of Warlock and the adventures could as easily have happened to the Starjammers, the Omega Men or other comic-book SF teams (the Instrumentality and the Papal High Lord could likewise be Palpatine and the Empire). Which wouldn’t bother me if I liked the adventures better — though Starlin’s art remains solidly entertaining.
I wouldn’t have bothered with DREADSTAR OMNIBUS Volume 2 except the first volume ended on a cliffhanger. Three or four issues in, I gave up on it. It felt even more conventional with the new adversaries Infra-Red and Ultra-Violet, Dreadstar getting a new costume and Vanth undergoing a transformation similar to how the cosmic entity Eon reinvented Captain Marvel during Starlin’s run on him. Still, I’m glad to have satisfied my curiosity about this series.
DC FINEST: Superman — Kryptonite Nevermore proved a fortuitous find for my Silver Age reread over at Atomic Junk Shop. While the 1971 story arc that starts with Superman #233 is on the DC app, the Action Comics stories from the same period are not. Like the DC Finest Legion of Superheroes collection, this fills a gap as the Silver Age transitions into Bronze.
The Superman story arc starts when a freak nuclear accident turns all kryptonite on Earth to iron. Suddenly Superman’s greatest weakness is gone! Not only that but Morgan Edge, the new owner of the Daily Planet, transfers Clark Kent from print to the cutting-edge world of TV reporting. Plus a mysterious flying figure, formed out of sand, begins showing up and slowly draining Superman’s powers away.
What’s going on? Well, it’s new editor Julius Schwartz and writer Denny O’Neil (Super-stalwart artist Curt Swan continues on the book) doing their best to give Kal a soft reboot (details here) away from the gimmicks of Silver Age super-editor Mort Weisinger. Over the course of 10 issues struggles to do his job while becoming weaker and weaker; even the help of Wonder Woman’s mystical mentor I Ching can’t seem to turn things around.
At the end of the story arc, the “Sand Superman” has left Earth for its home dimension carrying half of Superman’s powers with him. Kryptonite no longer allows ordinary thugs to take the Man of Might down; however he’s no longer the invincible figure he was before. While I’m not a fan of O’Neil’s writing he does put Superman through the wringer. However as soon as he left the book, Superman’s back to performing super-feats as if his power hadn’t dimmed at all. Of course, given he can fly inside the sun or shove the moon out of its orbit, it’s not like losing half his power would make him weak by most standards — I’m not sure how the heck you’d convey that (it does amuse me that Supergirl might have been stronger than he was at this point in time).
The Action run was under editor Murray Boltinoff with Curt Swan and primarily veteran DC writer Leo Dorfman. The stories don’t break the mold though the backups are interesting. After Supergirl got the leads lot in Adventure Comics, the Legion of Superheroes took over her backup in Action Comics for a while. Now most of the backups are various sort of “untold tales” about Superboy, Superman, Kandor, etc. Nothing staggering but they did add some novelty.
I’ll be discussing this era over at Atomic Junk Shop soon. Covers top to bottom by Jim Starlin (x2), Neal Adams and Curt Swan. All rights to images remain with current holders.
In a discussion of Doctor Who: Wish World at his Blue Towel Productions blog, Ben McClure says that when writing about an alternate reality version of a popular show, you can “make the new world incredibly interesting, often by raising all sorts of questions about how the world works or even how the world came into being at all … the other way to make an alternate-reality story interesting, and by far the preferred one, is to make the alternate-version of the character meaningful.”
I’ll be blogging about this in another context but it captures part of why I was disappointed in SUMMONED: The Free Judge Reborn, Book 1 by Michael Anderle. The book takes place in the 2080s, the history is very alternate but none of that seems to matter.
(This has nothing to do with the book, I’m just using random photographs to provide some visuals).
Kara Greims is a crusading attorney, constantly frustrated that money and connections allow so many of the people who wronged her clients to walk away without paying a price. When gets news her brother has been murdered in Los Angeles, she heads west and discovers he was a Free Judge, part of a secret, supernatural justice system devoted to providing justice when the secular, mortal system fails. As the skull of Jacob Grimm, her brother’s mentor, explains to Kara, the True Court prefers it if the True Judges bring justice via quasi-legal means — intimidate someone into confessing to law enforcement says — but if that doesn’t work, executing malefactors is acceptable. Kara’s first target (I’m assuming the family will turn out to be descendants of Jacob or his brother): the corrupt corporation that killed her brother.
This leads to the novel approach for an urban fantasy of having Kara work within the system: she digs up documents via public information requests, puts together a case that the company has been violating the law, gets it to the right regulators. It is not, however, novel outside urban fantasy; as she herself points out, it’s not that far from a Leverage episode. Or similar, earlier TV creations: Mission: Impossible‘s organized crime episodes, the TV movie Institute for Revenge and others.
Lack of novelty is not a problem. Bringing justice to those the law cannot touch is a popular premise and like the legend of Robin Hood, there’s always a need for someone to do it. What doesn’t work is that the bad guys fall too easily. Kara puts in a lot of effort to make her case — it’s not a cakewalk — but her legal moves invariably work. Where is the Hamilton Burger to her Perry Mason? Why are the bad guys’ lawyers not throwing up counter-moves? For all the work Kara performs, it’s too easy. Likewise, her repeated beating of the thugs they send after her makes me wonder why they don’t change tactics — a bomb in her car or something like that.
The final problem is the worldbuilding. In Kara’s timeline, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade took a different route in 1914 and he was never assassinated. No WW I, no treaty of Versailles imposing crushing burdens on Germany. No fascism. No WW II. Also no stock market crash, no Depression. On the downside, with no Cold War there was less pressure on the federal government to support civil rights, segregation continued unabated until the 1980s. At this point there was a horrifying fire in the Japanese neighborhoods of Los Angeles; assuming it was fueled by race, imperial Japan invaded and won. Kara’s story takes place a century later.
That’s a good premise for a timeline, though not always convincing (why would the stock market crash and the Depression not happen?). I don’t see any signs of it in the story, though. Other than zeppelins being the primary form of air transport, there’s nothing that feels different from 2026 in the real world. No sign of Japanese control. No sign the law is different. Hell, Leverage is a TV show in both worlds so apparently their history ain’t that different. To go back to that quote from Blue Towel Productions, it isn’t an interesting alternate world because there’s so little alternative about it.
Charles Finney’s 1935 THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO is one weird book. And I love the cover of my edition (wish I knew the artist)
Abalone, Arizona is a small, dull, dusty desert town. First the newspaper has a big ad announcing the coming of the circus, then it shows up. In small towns back then, that’s always exciting, but townies who gather to watch are underwhelmed — three wagons, that’s all? One of them with a horse that has a fake horn on its head, one of the wagon-drivers has horns on his head and plays a syrinx, there’s a dog painted green, a little old Chinese man and a furry Something/Someone in one of the cages — is it a bear? Or maybe a Russian? Lao himself can shift from pidgin English to standard English at will.
Despite the small procession into town, there’s a full circus with sideshow exhibits and a big tent when Lao opens his show that night (memory suggests a circus setting up magically this way is a common trope but I can’t swear to it). We have a sea serpent engaging in intellectual conversation about its life history. Medusa, carefully shielded so she’s only visible in a mirror (as you might guess, someone’s going to look closer …). The satyr sexually liberates a prim young woman. Two drunk college students cause trouble. Apollonius the seer gives a middle-aged woman a bleak prophecy: she won’t find love, nothing will change, nothing will improve, she’ll simply fade away, losing hope, and then she’ll die (it’s a strikingly sad moment). A sorcerer resurrects a dead man, who runs off immediately — he has important business! Almost all of which the locals treat with complete phlegmatism, no more excited than if they’d seen a tattooed man or the like. Faced with wonders they don’t find it that wondrous. Apollonius’ prophecy feels like it could apply to the entire town.
It’s an odd but fascinating story. No real plot, just a series of incidents. No real explanation of anything. The book concludes with a Cast of Characters list including details about people who were little more than walk-ons, or were mentioned but never appeared, plus a list of unanswered questions — was it a Russian or a bear? What business did the dead man have? The end result is not everyone’s cup of tea; I have no memory what I made of it when I read it in college, other than “that’s weird.” In its own way it’s brilliant. That said, we have a couple of racial epithets dropped into casual conversation and the satyr committing sexual assault; if those are unacceptable, well now you know.
I think such a plotless novel is unfilmable so it’s no surprise when they did film it, Charles Beaumont’s script for THE 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964) gives it a plot to hold everything together (the great George Pal directed it). A skilled fantasy writer and Twilght Zone scriptwriter, Beaumont gives it a Twilight Zone quality — Lao (Tony Randall in yellowface) shows up and transforms everyone’s lives for the better the same way Professor Fate saves Denton in the episode Mr. Denton on Doomsday. Though it also resembles the 1962 film musical The Music Man: like Harold Hill, Dr. Lao is a traveling trickster who revives the lives of everyone in town, including inspiring a prim librarian to find love (this does make Lao the equivalent of a “magical Negro”).
This version of Abalone is a dying town and everyone knows it. Cynical Stark (Arthur O’Connell) has offered to buy everyone out so they can leave and start over; newspaper publisher Ed Cunningham (John Ericson) is pushing his neighbors to say no. He’s also pushing widowed librarian Angela Benedict (Barbara Eden) to say yes to a date, without any luck.
Enter Lao and his circus. His satyr (Randall — the “seven faces” means he plays seven roles) loosens Angela up (not quite as rapey as the book scene), the serpent mocks Stark, Apollonius (Randall again) makes his bleak prophecy. Stark’s thugs harass everyone opposing him; somehow Lao neutralizes them.
The end result, alas, lacks the sophistication of a good Twilight Zone episode; it feels more like kidvid (Lao does spend a lot of time with Angela’s young son, who’s fascinated by him). The performances are competent but not stellar. Randall playing seven roles doesn’t add much, though “actor plays multiple roles” has its own appeal. It has some charm, but I think there’s a better unfaithful adaptation they could have made. “Every time I bet on weakness, corruption, and fallibility, I want to lose — but I always win.”
The old saying is that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. I planned to get a lot done this week; God said “ha!” meaning there were a ton of obstacles. Despite which, to my pleasant surprise, I did get a lot done.
First the obstacles. We were still dealing with Plushie’s ulcer (diagnosed last week) but as of his Thursday appointment, it’s cured. Once again our dog has beaten a health problem despite his nearly 16 years of age! That’s always nice. He’s still on an antibiotic for the ulcer but that’s more a precaution than a necessity. We’re taking it though.
Trixie didn’t do so well. Last week she was becoming weirdly picky about food and reluctant to eat her meds. She also felt … off, in a way I can sense but couldn’t define. Sunday she began not eating at all so we took her into the vet Monday, followed by the emergency vet (they could do a couple of tests Park Vet couldn’t). At first the news was horrifying: anemic, blood count up, white blood cells up, which could indicate an infection, or possibly internal bleeding. At the end of the day, by virtue of eliminating the alternatives, they settled on probably some bleeding in the GI tract (I will skip the technical details).
We came home with directions to switch some of her meds and to have her drink a protective slurry an hour before her meals. It’s working: we took her in for a recheck Wednesday and all her signs have improved, though not by a lot (but the vet said that’s expected). She’s livelier, though also sleepier — she’s on Gabapentin now and it knocks her out. But she’s clearly happier and more interested in eating so this is a definite win. A demanding one — the need to time the slurry and her food and some of her meds makes our schedules that much more complicated.
Oh, and I also had to take our car in for an oil change and checkup. That took up a couple of hours too.
Despite which, work went well. I got two articles in for The Local Reporter, both out next week. Might get a third one done but I think that’s where the dog drama will leave me too wiped. I also got three posts up at Atomic Junk Shop, one about iron-on shirt decals in the 1970s, one on a really weird 1971 cover (above, by Murphy Anderson) and one about the path to (IMHO) the definitive Phantom Stranger run by Jim Aparo and Len Wein which kicked off with the cover at left by Aparo.
I worked through another year of Doc Savage’s history for Savage Adventures, and polished the bibliography. And then, on Let No Man Put Asunder, I really got some good stuff done. First I went through the writing guide Writing the Breakout Novel, taking notes on stuff that might be useful to think about (give your villains goals. Your supporting characters too). Maybe not — while I’ve read the book a lot, I’m not sure I use it’s techniques not. But I think I’m using it early enough in the rewrite process that might be different.
Then I started rereading, taking notes along the way. Insights or phrases someone offers more than once (“making the beast with two backs” is not going to appear more than once). Thin characterization or motivation. Implausible plotting. Places where it needs more tension. I got a third of the way through the book; that’s pretty good.
I also received by McFarland second-half-of-the-year royalty check. Small, but my books are still selling, which is cool; if you bought one of them, thanks!
And I now have three stories in the “made the first cut” category. No guarantee any of them will sell — I’m quite used to “This was a really tough decision, but …” emails — but they’re all possibilities. More disappointingly, I won’t get an author table to sell my books at Retcon next year. It was quite lucrative this year because it’s set up so all the con-goers go past the sale area frequently, probably why table requests have quadrupled. I’m on the waiting list so fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed too for more weeks like this.
Below, a typical Len Wein opening to a Phantom Stranger story. Aparo art.
