Stemalum scit.

I've felt weird these past couple months about having a blog in a very public space.  I think this is fine when I'm temping at the Evonik Degussa Corporation, but I don't like the idea that my students and maybe even other professional academics can read about my travails at the catering department, or my trip to Chicago, or whatnot.  So, I'm going to be friends-locking anything that's not a book/audio/comic/whatever review from here on out, and also going back and friends-locking old stuff sooner or later.

This means, mom, that you're going to have to get an account if you want to continue to read what I'm up to.

Steve

Last month, I read two Doctor Who books, the first time I've done that since December 2008. And the first of them was a whopper; I actually started it some time in mid-October and only finished it up early in the new month.

Doctor Who: Re:Collections: The Best of Short Trips Maidenhead: Big Finish, 2009 (2002-9) hardcover, 468 pages new bookstore purchase (online), July 2009 With the end of Big Finish's long-running series of Short Trips anthologies, came this, a collection of the best stories from each of the preceding twenty-eight volumes (as picked by each volume's editor). I own fourteen of the volumes, but I've only read six of them, and I decided it was probably best to read Re:Collections before reading any more, rather than after: this way, more than two-thirds of the book are new to me, not just half. It certainly does live up to its title: these are some of the best Doctor Who stories ever published, bar none. A few aren't to my taste, and though, and in the case of some of the volumes I have read, I would have picked other stories: I don't think Justin Richards's "The Glass Princess" is terribly affecting, for example, and out of The Muses, I would have plumped for Robert Shearman's sublime "Teach Yourself Ballroom Dancing" instead. But there's only three stories I out-and-out disliked: "Lost and Founded" by Andrew Pidoux from Christmas Around the World just seemed pointless, while the other two were both from anthologies edited by Gary Russell: maybe we just have very divergent tastes in prose fiction? (That would also explain my reactions to most of his novels.) Suffice it to say, that Stuart Manning's "Venus" (from The Solar System) is a neat idea wrapped in an incredibly dull plot (I'd have rather seen the sf adventure pastiche Russell says was the story's original premise) while I though Andy Frankham-Allen's "The Dead Man's Story" was dreadful the first time I read Repercussions, and it remains so. His prose is incredibly awkward, his characters flat, and his plot dreadfully overdone. Aside from that, though, it's hard to quibble with any of the choices from the volumes I've already read. "Apocrypha Bipendium" by Ian Potter (from Companions) is brilliant multigeneric tale featuring the eighth Doctor, Charley Pollard, William Shakespeare, Troilus, and Cressida, and just as funny the second time around. Steve Lyons's "All Our Christmasses" (from A Christmas Treasury) is a nicely self-referential tale about getting what you want. Most of all, I was beyond pleased to see "Life After Queth" by Matt Kimpton (from Farewells) here: who would have thought that a sequel to Frontios featuring the Gravis in his only outing as a companion would be so much fun? Then, of course there's the material from volumes I haven't read yet. Stel Pavlou's "Checkpoint", a tale of Cold War Berlin has a limp solution but a great atmosphere, and it had me looking forward to The Centenarian even more than I already was. "The Avant Guardian" (from Time Signature) has a typically ingenious Eddie Robson premise: a 1950s BBC electronica composer who uses her music to rewrite the space-time continuum. "Lare Domestici" by Anna Bratton (from How The Doctor Changed My Life) captures the second Doctor with brilliant precision in a neat little story. And then there's "The Spindle of Necessity", a story by Allyn Gibson (from The Quality of Leadership) that sees the sixth Doctor in a Socratic dialogue and broadening his horizons in a way he would never have expected. At first I was a little wait, what? at the way it ended, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. And finally, there's all those stories from volumes I haven't read and probably never will; I don't have that much time and money. It's nice to sample them this way: having only read the best from each book, I'm ensured to have a good memory of each volume. Marc Platt's "Ruins of Heaven" (from Steel Skies) is a great Peri story that really delves into her characters and sees her meeting angels. "The Thief of Sherwood" by Jonathan Morris (from Past Tense) is a work of genius, relating an adventure for the first Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara in the form of excerpts from episode guides, Doctor Who Magazine, and so on. Amazing! Paul Magrs brings back Iris Wildthyme in "Suitors, Inc." (from Seven Deadly Sins), and she's as batty and enjoyable as ever, though unfortunately the story abruptly ends. Simon Guerrier serves the seventh Doctor quite nicely in "How You Get There" (from A Day in the Life), which is all about the people he meets as he travels across the city via public transport to a showdown with a deadly villain. "Losing the Audience" by Mat Coward (from Defining Patterns) is another journey into the early BBC, this one into the world of radio comedy, and it is also quite good: I love these stories that can make me nostalgic for something I've never experienced! And Richard Wright's "Lonely" (from Transmissions) is suitably creepy, and a story that can only work in text. Probably my favorite story in the whole book is "The Glarn Strategy" (from Snapshots). I haven't read anything by Brian Dooley before, but this is a gem. It perfectly captures the fourth Doctor and the second Romana, while also some suitably unnerving moments, strongly characterized guest characters, and a suitable bonkers alien. Does being the best story in a book of best stories make it the greatest Doctor Who tale of all time? Maybe, maybe not, but it's dang close. As you might imagine, this is a strong collection: Short Trips would have had to be pretty crap for it not to be, and it was generally quite good. There's a lot of more "experimental" stories in here, but I think that plays to the strengths of Doctor Who and the short story medium: a "typical" Doctor Who story (if there is such a thing) doesn't condense well, nor does it work quite so well in print, so I always welcome the stories that do something a little bit different. I think sometimes editors don't want too many experimental stories in one volume, but I think that works against the strengths of Doctor Who, and I'm glad we have a book here that lets us concentrate the brilliance and range of Doctor Who into 468 pages. From "'I Was A Monster!!!'" to "The Fall of the Druids", from "The Dead Man's Story" to "The Glarn Strategy", Re:Collections shows us everything Doctor Who can do. Perhaps unsurprisingly (each for his own reason), the Doctors who show up the most are the fourth and the eighth, each featuring in five stories (not counting "The Glass Princess", which stars all of the first eight Doctors). They are followed by the second and third (four stories each), the first and fifth (three stories each), the sixth (two stories), and the seventh (just one story). Of all the companions, Romana shows up the most, appearing in a whopping four stories. Jamie McCrimmon is in three, and the only other ones to show up in more than one are Charley Pollard, Victoria Waterfield, Susan Foreman, Sarah Jane Smith, and Tegan Jovanka. The other companions appearing are Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Vicki Pallister, Zoe Heriot, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant, Harry Sullivan, Leela, K-9, Vislor Turlough, Kamelion(!), the Gravis, Peri Brown, Bernice Summerfield, William Shakespeare, and (bizarrely) Jeremy Fitzoliver. (Other recurring characters who pop up include Emily Chaudhury, Iris Wildthyme, Ross Brimmicombe-Wood, Edward Grainger, and Kalendorf.) There are a few strange omissions, mostly in the 1980s (Nyssa, Adric, and Ace), but I suppose that's just the way things broke down. Or maybe they just don't make for good stories! Interestingly, no author has more than one story in the volume. It could have just happened that way, I suppose, but I wonder if it was deliberate.

Doctor Who: Mission: Impractical by David A. McIntee London: BBC, 1998 mass market paperback, 280 pages acquisition uncertain, March 2007 As you can see from the poorly photoshopped screen captures on the cover, this novel brings back Sabalom Glitz, the lovable space rogue from The Trial of a Time Lord. It also brings back his bumbling assistant Dibber and features the sixth Doctor with his classic companion Frobisher, the shapeshifting penguin. And they all have to stage a heist together! (Also: the Ogrons are in it for some reason.) How could this not be fun? McIntee's sixth Doctor, Glitz, and Dibber are spot on, and the scenes with them are the best parts of the book. His Frobisher is decent but strangely underused. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel's supporting characters don't exactly set the world alight-- and I have a hard time buying anyone could be romantically interested in Glitz! The best part of the novel is the heist itself, but it takes over half the book to get there, and the aftermath of the heist failed to engage me at all. Fun, but it could have been stronger. Steve

Next up: postcolonial literature

I read four books for my seminar on women and work in the 19th century this semester... though admittedly one of them was supposed to be read last month. Oh, well.

	Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There. by Harriet E. Wilson New York: Vintage, 2002 (1859) trade paperback, 140 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 Henry Louis Gates's introduction to this edition likes to trumpet the fact that it's the first known novel written by an African-American and published in America (the continents, not the country). I suspect, however, that if it was the seventh, we'd be much less interested in it. The characters, even Frado, the protagonist, are all thin caricatures (though most of them are good for a joke or two, which helps alleviate that). It does deal with some interesting notions (especially the blindness of white abolitionists in the North), but what Wilson chooses to focus on is often strangely arbitrary: we get the marital shenanigans of Frado's white relatives in excruciating detail, whereas Frado's own marriage happens in two very short pages. Gates's critical apparatus is really focused on the autobiographical components to the novel, and though they are considerable, the fact that Wilson published a novel and not an autobiography ought to count for something, I think. The introduction spends a lot of time desperately trying to convince the reader that the Harriet E. Wilson of Boston who wrote this novel is the same of the Harriet E. Wilson of Boston who was a seamstress at the same time, which seems fairly self-evident to me, while the endnotes try to match every character to a historical figure and complain vociferously when they can't. Also annoying is the fact that endnotes are not actually indicated in the text, so the reader just has to guess there might be some referring to a specific page and check. I suspect anyone interested in Our Nig (as unlikely as that seems) would be better off with the new Penguin Classics edition.
	Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa May Alcott London: Penguin, 1994 (1873) trade paperback, 344 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 This is the story of Christie, an orphan who decides to make her own way in the world. As she grows from young adult to middle age, she tries her hand at a number of different jobs; in fact, almost all of the jobs available to a woman of her era: servant, actress, governess, companion, and seamstress. (I think there are two notable exceptions: prostitute (for obvious reasons) and factory worker (weirdly, especially for a New Englander).) We see her try her hand at each of these jobs, and I found this pretty fascinating, as Alcott seems to be working to make Christie into a figure who can speak for all working women (except for the lazy Irish, of course), even if some of the chapters go off into odd digressions: the governess chapter becomes bogged down in a tedious courtship, while the companion chapter seems like it's from a melodrama and a different book entirely. Most are fun: as a servant, she burns her mistress's dresses (whoops!), while as an actress we get a nineteenth-century perspective on the dangers of acting a part. After trying her hand at seamstressing, though, Christie has a breakdown and moves in with some incredibly preachy and boring people while she recovers, and though she does eventually work as a nurse, we get to see curiously little of it compared to her previous occupations. I found this part pretty dull, and though Christie's romance in this book is better than any of the ones in Little Women, Alcott still can't write people falling in love to save her life.
	Adam Bede by George Eliot London: Penguin, 1980 (1859) mass market paperback, 607 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 I read this book for the first time this summer for the M.A. Exam, and I loved it; I couldn't not read it again for class, even if it is 600 pages of very small, very slow print. I didn't finish my reread by the time we talked about it in class, but I did get there eventually, which is good, as I am writing my second paper for the class on it. I don't have much to say beyond that it's even better the second time around. Eliot sketches her characters with such detail, such precision: everyone of them is a real person whose every action you understand and sympathize with, even those who in simpler versions of this story would be out-and-out villains. Knowing what's coming makes it even better (though the ending drags even more), as you can see exactly how the characters' actions proceed inexorably from their natures. I love this book. I need to read more Eliot, and soon.
	A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett London: Penguin, 2005 (1885) trade paperback, 271 pages Amazon.com purchase, September 2009 Nan Price is adopted by a doctor as a young orphan (there's a lot of them around in nineteenth-century women's literature-- we're five for four this month!) and grows up to become a doctor herself. Despite the title, which might make you think this book is about a country doctor, this actually happens in the last chapter. So is it about her going to medical school? Not really, as that all transpires "off camera" so to speak. Mostly it's about her adoptive father the doctor, who is admittedly fairly cool, but tends to talk a lot about the dangers of medical science. I do not think I have ever read a book where so many pages went by yet so little happened-- but inexplicably I was almost never bored! The pages just rolled by, and I read them. On the other hand, I never got excited either. There's some interesting, if muddled, discourse about inheritance here: Nan has to have negative, unmotherly traits because of her mother, but she also has to be a doctor because of her environment... and yet her being a doctor is also a calling from God. Nature, nurture, or divine influence? Who knows. Steve

Next up: Doctor Who

I seem to be permanently assigned to the New Eighth Doctor Adventures at Unreality SF now, which is fine by me given that Paul McGann is "my Doctor" (as people like to say in the wake of "Time Crash"). As a result, I have reviewed Doctor Who: The New Eighth Doctor Adventures #4.1: Death in Blackpool, written by Alan Barnes (Storm Warning, Neverland) and starring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith, featuring Helen Lederer as Aunty Pat (who previously appeared, though played by a different actress, in Horror of Glam Rock and The Zygon Who Fell to Earth). The NEDAs are running a Christmas special between seasons, much as the parent show does these days, and like those it features somewhat momentous events in the lives of the Doctor and his companion.

You might wonder what I got up during Thanksgiving; do not worry, you shall find out soon enough.

Steve

Superman: For Tomorrow, Volume One
Writer: Brian Azzarello
Penciller: Jim Lee
Inker: Scott Williams
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterers: Rob Leigh, Nick J. Napolitano

DC Universe Timeline: 2 Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2006

(It has to have been over a year since Identity Crisis, as "the Vanishing" happened a year prior to the opening of this story, and that has to have come after Identity Crisis. However, just two months remain until the Infinite Crisis-- meaning only three months have passed since Identity Crisis!)

The thing I really like about Superman-- the thing that I think Superman For All Seasons captured so well-- is that he's a guy who feels like the weight of the entire world is on his shoulders. He doesn't angst out over this, not usually, but feels it all the time. He has the power to do the greatest good of anyone in the entire world; how can that not weigh on him? So he does his best, like any hero would do, but not even Superman's best is always enough. Sometimes, he fails.


For Tomorrow begins a year after the Vanishing, an incident where over a million people vanished instantaneously. Superman wasn't there-- he was in space, doing what Superman does, helping people-- and he holds himself accountable, not the least because among the Vanished is one Lois Lane. Superman travels to the apparent origin point of the energy waves that cause the Vanishing, tracking them down to a country in the Middle East. When he arrives there, he doesn't find the source of the Vanishing, but he does find a civil war: one he decides to end.

( 'Superman For Tomorrow' or 'Superman: For Tomorrow'? These are the questions of punctuation that keep me up at night. )

I don't know where For Tomorrow is going yet, but that doesn't stop me from looking forward to volume two. Superman should always be written this well.

Steve

Next up: Superman: For Tomorrow, Volume Two

There's another review from me up on Unreality SF: it is sort of related to my regular Companion Chronicle duties (which I'm trying to limit myself to at the moment), as I am reviewing the Companion Chronicle that came free with issue #411 of Doctor Who Magazine, The Mists of Time, written by Jonathan Morris (Max Warp, The Glorious Revolution) and starring Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

This came out with the July issue, actually, but I kept on letting it slide, wanting to work my way through Cyberman as well as some "just for fun" audio dramas (mostly the Mila trilogy) first.  So I've finally gotten around to it four months later.  I justified the delay to myself on the basis that as it was free, no one really needed to know if it was any good or not; it's not like they could be ripped off if they got it and it was crappy (though it wasn't).

Steve

And this month's roundup draws to a close, with these two works of nonfiction. I'm making a concerted effort to read more nonfiction these days; we'll see how that goes.

Dark Matters: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Philip Pullman's internationally bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy by Lance Parkin and Mark Jones London: Virgin, 2005 mass market paperback, 277 pages borrowed from the library (ILL) I had thought that my journey through the world of His Dark Materials would be over when I read The Art of Darkness last month, but that was before I discovered this book, an unauthorized guide to the series. Of course, guides to bestselling book series are a dime a dozen, as limited-use books like What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7 attest to. But this was no ordinary guide: this one was co-written by Lance Parkin, whose Doctor Who thoughts I have avidly enjoyed on a number of occasions, so I decided to give it a spin. The book is divided into four parts. The first is a biography of Philip Pullman, which I was initially unexcited about, but it actually turns out to be a pretty insightful little piece, warning against the dangers of biography-based criticism and also discussing the way the popularity of the His Dark Materials novels came to be. The second part is a guide to "the stories". This is lead off with some fairly lengthy synopses (30 pages in all) of the novels, which I found pretty pointless: who is going to buy this book that doesn't already know this information? We also get a brief write-up on Lyra's Oxford. More interesting are the parts on the audio versions of the story (both talking book and radio drama) and stageplay, though the latter seems to have been written by someone who hasn't actually seen it. The section on the film suffers from the fact that this book came out a full two years before the film (I guess it was supposed to cash in on the stageplay?) and is thus full of guesses, many of which turned out not to be the case. I was initially unexcited to realize that the third part, which at 185 pages takes up two-thirds of the book, was an "A-Z", a series of encyclopedia-like entries detailing every character, place, object, and concept to appear in the novels. Entries like "ALLAN - Lord Boreal's chauffeur in Will's world [SK, 161]" do not exactly scintillate. However, hidden between these examples of mundanity are actually some rather sharp little mini-essays. The entries on Lord Asriel, atheism, the Authority, and William Blake, among many others, chart quite well the way these ideas or people pop up throughout the trilogy, examining their uses, meanings, and potential contradictions. The nice thing about the A-Z is that it doesn't discriminate, pulling in information from the audio versions (such as pronunciations) and the stageplay (such as background on the church), though this information doesn't always gell, as the book is quick to point out. Also nice are the articles that provide comprehensive guides to things, such as the list of all known alethiometer symbols and meanings (across all media) or the list of all visited alternate worlds (though it's missing at least one that I can think of). It can be a bit boring to read through in order, as you have to slog through some short and uninteresting entries to get to the good ones, but then again, I suspect you're not supposed to read it that way! The book's last section is a chronology of Lyra's world, piecing together the various historical references we get throughout the trilogy. The best part of this is that Parkin and Jones have done a day-by-day breakdown of all the events of the trilogy itself: the passage of time in those books is something I've always been a bit fuzzy on. The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights as it is consistently referred to, given this book's country of origin) spans a much longer period than I'd expected, from September 30th, 1996 to January 5th, 1997, a whopping ninety-six days! On the other hand, the last two books take much less time than I'd figured: The Subtle Knife runs just a week (from January 6th to 12th), while The Amber Spyglass takes fifty-five days (from January 13th to March 8th), though that includes the three-weeks-later epilogue. Hard to believe that such a massive war is waged so briefly! (This is something the authors themselves point out in the A-Z.) It's a nicely done piece of work, and probably the highlight of the book to me. I don't think I've ever read a guide to a novel series before, but I have to imagine that this is among the higher end. It's occasionally a bit humdrum, but the moments of insight more than make up for this. It's a shame it couldn't have come out two years later, though.

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers by Tom Standage New York: Berkley, 1999 (1998) trade paperback, 228 pages borrowed from valancy_s I was loaned this after one of my frequent declarations of interest in technology and science and their impact on society, especially in the Victorian era. As one can tell from the title, this book covers exactly that, discussing the birth and death of the telegraph. The first half of the book is a history of the telegraph, from its origins as an optical French device, to the invention of the electric version, and the laying of the transatlantic cable. It's all information I knew little about, and like all the best scientific developments, it makes for good reading. The second half of the book discusses the way that contemporary society actually used the telegraph-- as the title implies, there are a lot of comparisons to the Internet, and most of them are apt. (The occasional anachronistic use of "on-line" was rather jarring, though.) The section on love on the wires was particularly good-- Internet dating apparently has a long and venerable heritage! It's also interesting to see how a lot of the rhetoric around the Internet-- such as the creation of a global village-- surrounded the telegraph, too, and was proved false then! The telegraph didn't bring nations together, creating peace; it simply allowed messages to get to the battlefront quicker! All in all, a nice little book, with a good overview of a fascinating topic. I've been talking of late about teaching a special section of Freshman English for engineering students; if I did, we'd certainly be reading this.

( Summative Information for October 2009: Pick of the Month, All Books Read, All Books Acquired, Books Remaining )

Steve

With Tom's Victorian lit seminar six months behind me, you'd think my investment in The War of the Worlds would be over, right? Well, you'd be wrong-- it is, after all, allegedly going to be my dissertation topic.

A few months ago, valancy_s told me about a stage show that a friend of hers was stage-managing: The Big Broadcast of October 30th, 1938. It was being put on by the Post-Meridian Radio Players, who I had actually fleetingly heard of before: they'd done a stage version of the Lights Out! episode that inspired Bill Cosby's famous "The Chicken Heart That Ate New York City" routine. This time, however, they would be doing something even closer to my heart: a stage version of Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds broadcast!

Unfortunately, we both forgot all about it, but on the 29th, Christiana suddenly recollected it, and I hastily made arrangements to attend. Even though it was nearly two hours away, in Boston, I couldn't miss this! You will recall that my seminar paper for Tom's class was on Fighters from Mars, an Americanized version of The War of the Worlds transposed to Boston. How could I pass up the chance to see this exact process carried out all over again?

I got lost going to the Somerville Theatre, but fortunately the theatre itself was able to guide me in over the phone. Parking was another matter-- I hate cities. But eventually I made it, meeting up with Christiana mere minutes before the show started. The Big Broadcast actually had two halves: the first of these was The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour, This was presented as being a recreation of a contemporary radio show, though I can't find any reference to that actually being the case (from my admittedly cursory Google search). The Frank Cyrano Byfar Hour is a radio show about the making of a radio show; this initially seemd hopelessly confusing to me until I remembered the somewhat obvious example of TV shows about the making of TV shows, like 30 Rock. So, what we in the audience were seeing was a stage show about a radio show about a radio show. Talk about metatheatricality!

The stage consisted of an area in front with several mics set up, where the actors would read their lines. On stage left behind them was the band, and on stage right behind them was the foley artist and her setup, which included a door and a floor for stomping on. All the lines were performed by the actors standing at the mics, while the foley artist would generate sound effects. It wasn't exactly as a radio show would be put on, however, as most of the actors were in costume-- despite the fact that the idea people would wear costumes on air was occasionally mocked by the script! It was occasionally unclear what "level" things were happening on-- when a mysterious cloaked figure appeared, was it something that was happening in the "fake" radio show or the "real" radio show? It's seemingly in the fake one, as the foley artist provided the footsteps, but then why was the man actually cloaked and our character seemingly actually menaced?

The Byfar Hour part of the show was enjoyable-- mostly comedic and usually amusing, if not always laugh-out-loud funny. It spanned the first act and a half of the show; at the halfway point of the second act, a character comes running in saying they need to switch over to CBS because he's heard some dramatic news: aliens! Everyone is skeptical, but eventually they relent and patch their broadcast into CBS's, at which point we get a recreation of the opening of the Welles broadcast of The War of the Worlds-- done as before, with some reading it into a microphone. When this ends, we see that a group of mobsters are listening to the radio, themselves hearing the War of the Worlds broadcast.

This is where the metatheatrical element gets confusing again: for though the Welles broadcast is shown as being staged, with all the actors reading into microphones and the sound effects being given via Foley as before, the mobsters also read their lines into the mics and have their sound effects given via Foley. So are we watching a radio show about a bunch of mobsters listening to a radio show about the Martian invasion? And is this happening in the world of the Byfar Hour? Who knows. In any case, it's the Martian invasion of Boston: the Welles script is tweaked to refer to Boston locations and Boston people. The astronomer visited becomes Harlow Shapley, and at one point the real mayor of Boston appears as the historical one! I think the story's been expanded, too, but I'm not sure: it's been a couple years since I've heard the Welles broadcast. Does the Thunder Child incident happen in that version?

Though the different levels of narrative work well for comedy, I wasn't initially 100% sure it worked for drama. You can laugh at the antics of someone at a microphone telling you what's going on, but can you feel fear when you're just watching someone talk about the terrible things they're seeing, as you see a Foley artist bang a trash can into the ground behind them to simulate the stomping of a Martian tripod? Three girls who had been the "Putnam Sisters" in the Byfar Hour, singing the main theme, reappear here on one of the balconies as the voices of the Martians, being bathed in green light as they provide the occasional "Ulla!" Initially some of the audience even laughed at this, but soon, it's not so funny any more. The rest of the act cuts back and forth between the broadcast itself and the mobsters' reaction to it, as they try to take advantage of the situation or at least live through it.

The climax of the second act comes in what's the probably the longest uninterrupted scene-- there's a lot of cutting otherwise, which I wasn't convinced worked. It's a broadcast from a tower overlooking the harbor, as a reporter narrates the battle of the USS Wyoming against a tripod, culminating in the ship's destruction, of course. Then the tripod comes for him, and the combination of his desperate reportage, the chorus crying "Ulla!", and the continuous stomping combine to create what was actually a very chilling sequence. After this, we cut back to one mobster left on his own. Up until this point I'd been wondering if the broadcast was really happening in the world of the mobsters, or if they were falling victim to the hoax, but when a tripod destroys his nightclub-- and him-- I was left wondering no longer.

Once I got into it, I really enjoyed this section of the play, though sometimes the sound effects were rather too loud and drowned out the dialogue. That may have been intended, and it could work for short bursts to show the terrible situation the broadcasters were all in, but it happened for several decently-long speeches, and it was a bit annoying. But it was only three times, I think, so not too terrible.

The third act opens with Professor Bradford-- this play's version of Professor Pierson-- narrating from the ruined house. I wondered how they would expand that last short section of the broadcast to a whole act, but they do: Bradford soon encounters the girlfriend of the mob boss from the second act, and they fall in love before being captured by a group of "Oirish" actors, apparently from a rival mob. The rest of the play follows the uneasy alliance between the first group of Italian mobsters, the second group of Irish ones, and the National Guard as they try to survive in the post-Martian world. Like all adaptations of The War of the Worlds, it cops out-- the humans are able to strike back against the Martians, downing a tripod and reverse-engineering its heat-ray. This was ameliorated somewhat by the mobsters turning on each other, at which point the Martian tripods suddenly all collapse.

The last scene of the play is a party on the first anniversary of the Martians' defeat, which somewhat incongruously has the speech about God's wisdom putting microbes on the earth read over it. We then see the surviving characters; the professor and the girlfriend are now an item, and the mob boss has found a new girlfriend-- one of the Byfar Hour characters from the first half! A couple other ones show up, and then curtain.

The third act is really different from the first two: it has the most staging of any part of the play, though everything is still read into the mics. There's some good comedy, especially relating to the professor and the girlfriend's growing relationship, as well as to Boston itself. The whole thing is definitely a love letter to Boston, with lots of place names meticulously thrown in, and lots of local references. Shapley was at Harvard, and at one point, Bradford get the line, "I'm an MIT man; I never joke about engineering." I was trying to decide if the writers of this (Neil Marsh and Alicia E. Goranson) had any awareness of Fighters from Mars, and I didn't find any indication, but they do some similar things. And in both versions, the fact that Boston gets invaded serves as a validation of it: it means we have something worth invading! It's a far cry from the vast, cool, and unsympathetic Martians of H. G. Wells's version.

Interestingly, the program for the play refers to it as a "performance of Howard Koch's celebrated radio play WAR OF THE WORLDS... performed by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the Air." Usually the play is simply referred to as being Orson Welles's work, but as they quite rightly pointed out by doing this, it was Koch's idea and he wrote the script; Orson Welles merely(?) directed and starred in it. The fact that the program also gives a special thanks to Annie Koch (a descendant of Howard, I assume) might have something to do with this unusual emphasis.

Though it was a bit long (three acts, as I said, totaling about 3.5 hours), I enjoyed the whole event immensely, even if it did remind me a bit of Mark Gatiss's Invaders from Mars! I made off with both a program and a fictional newspaper distributed at the event, material in hand. This can certainly make up a chapter of my dissertation...

Steve

Usually I manage to read one or maybe two Green Arrow comics in a month, but this past month both the library's acquisition speed and my reading speed were high, letting me read three of them in pretty rapid sequence.

	Green Arrow: Crawling through the Wreckage by Judd Winick New York: DC, 2007 (2006) comic trade paperback, 143 pages borrowed from the library (ILL) This volume picks up a year after the explosive events of Heading into the Light, and it's been a heckuva year-- a wall has been built to separate the ghetto, Green Arrow (both of him) has disappeared, and Oliver Queen has become mayor of Star City. I enjoyed Winick's early work on Green Arrow, but I'm really starting to tire of his approach; this was a bit better than the preceding book, though. The lame villains don't help: I never particularly liked Brick, and I've always thought that Deathstroke the Terminator was just dumb. Dumb name, dumb costume. Also, drugs turning innocent citizens into monsters was done by Winick five volumes ago. The best part of this book is Ollie trying out his new role as mayor, and I wish that we had more of that. The bit where he combines his two roles of politician and superhero to outsmart Deathstroke was great. On the other hand, him refusing to let anyone bring down the ghetto wall makes absolutely zero sense; glad to see you're willing to let people die to prove some kind of point, G.A. Scott McDaniel's art has the virtue of being consistently decent. His Ollie is especially nice, though sometimes his face looks really weird. I don't really care for the full lips and big boobs he draws on Mia.
	Green Arrow: Road to Jericho by Judd Winick New York: DC, 2007 (2006-7) comic trade paperback, n. pag. borrowed from the library (ILL) After six years, the revived Green Arrow series that began with Quiver came to an end with the comics collected here. They have three distinct chunks. The first is a flashback to what Team Arrow got up to in the year between Heading into the Light and Crawling through the Wreckage, which is train on a tropical island with Buddhists and assassins. This is pretty good, especially for what it shows us of Oliver's new drive and determination. The second part of the book has Green Arrow and Batman teaming up to take down the Red Hood. I guess this guy actually used to be Robin, which would would explained why Batman is even more ticked off than usual, but the book never actually bothers to mention that-- thanks Wikipedia. Mostly this story is a lot of Winick's usual dramatic punching and hitting. There's a part where the Red Hood works on Mia psychologically, but the effect of this is half-hearted at best and never convinces. The last part of the book brings everything from Winick's run together by pitting Green Arrow against Brick, Merlyn, Deathstroke the Terminator, and Constantine Drakon. This could be great, right? G.A. finally getting to beat up the villains that have bedeviled him for years, even if two of them are lame? Connor and Mia at his back, not to mention that Black Canary is finally back? Unfortunately, it's not great, as the Justice League randomly shows up and defeats them. And then tears down the wall in the Star City ghetto, even though Oliver didn't want them to do that a book back. That's the ending? Consider me underwhelmed. The political storyline ends up getting much less play than I'd've liked-- I think Ollie as mayor is a great idea-- but the way it's capped off is quite nice. And the book's very last moment speaks well for Oliver's development as a character (though I'd wish we'd seen more of it) and for the Green Arrow and Black Canary series that span off from this one. This series might be finished, but the journey's not over yet. Though Scott McDaniel continues to not be out-and-out bad like some of the post-Hester/Parks artists on the series, I still can't say that I'm in love with his art. It's usually passable, but all his black characters pretty much look the same, and I hate his interpretation of Constantine Drakon. The man's short, but he shouldn't look like a dwarf.
	Connor Hawke: Dragon's Blood by Chuck Dixon New York: DC, 2008 (2007) comic trade paperback, 144 pages borrowed from the library (ILL) One of my consistent complaints about Judd Winick's run on Green Arrow is that the other Green Arrow, Oliver Queen's son Connor Hawke, doesn't get the amount of play that he should, usually just getting beaten up to prove that the situation is serious. So it's nice to see him get a miniseries all of his own. As far as I can tell, this ran between the end of Green Arrow and the beginning of Green Arrow and Black Canary, so I decided to read it then. It's a good little story, seeing Connor drawn into an archery contest in China-- where not everything is quite as it seems. Chuck Dixon gets Connor in a way that Winick clearly never did, which makes sense given that he wrote for Connor quite a lot on the pre-Quiver Green Arrow series. It's nice to see Connor go through the wringer and come out all the better for it. The fact that there are two Green Arrows, father and son, is one of my favorite parts of the Green Arrow mythos, so I hope to see more of Connor going forward. Steve

Next up: nonfiction

Another month ends, another reading roundup begins. I read a lot less this month compared to last, which means that the categories have to become suitably broader.

	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Taken from Accounts by His Own Hand and Other Sundry Sources, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2008 hardcover, 561 pages Amazon.com purchase, April 2009 As soon as I finished The Pox Party, the first of the two Octavian Nothing books, I rushed to my computer to purchase the second. Of course, it took me six months to get around to reading it. It was worth the wait: Anderson continues to write brilliantly, and the tale of Octavian is as immersive as ever. It's especially great to have Pro Bono back in action, as he was probably the best supporting character from the previous novel. And the gruesome plight of the main characters, as "free" soldiers in the British forces during the Revolutionary War, is portrayed with just the right amount of reality, becoming quite uncomfortable at times. It's a fair bit longer than the first volume, and I feel like that's where the problem lies, as there's a lot of time where the characters just all seem to hang out a ship together, waiting and waiting and waiting. I just felt like it went on and on and on. To be fair, so did Octavian, but continual diary entries about boredom are not exactly compelling Still, the end is fantastic, and the last page of Anderson's epilogue is a poetic as anything else in the book, too.
	Villette by Charlotte Brontë London: Penguin, 2004 (1853) trade paperback, 611 pages Amazon.com purchase, August 2009 I don't get the love for the Brontës. Okay, Jane Eyre is a classic, but everything else I've read thus far reads like it was written by a teenage girl suffering from a massive inferiority complex. Actually, so does Jane Eyre, but it rises above it. Villette does not. This is the story of Lucy Snowe, a girl who no one understands-- because she's just too deep and complex for them! And too good for them. And no one loves her, but maybe that's because she never gives any of them any signs of affection herself. Also, she's an annoying narrator, holding back information for no readily apparent reason. Also, the story contains an absurd amount of coincidence which makes Jane Eyre falling asleep on the doorstep of her cousin positively plausible. Maybe no one likes you because you're stuck-up and obnoxious, Lucy, did you think of that? And anti-Catholic, that's really endearing too. And racist. Though for someone who hates the French, Brontë sure does put an obnoxious amount of the dialogue in French. Thank God for the endnotes. Or not, as Helen Cooper's editing of this Penguin Classic edition is not the greatest; I question the value of any scholarly edition that feels the need to tell me what the House of Commons is. Or the Garden of Eden.
	Surfacing by Margaret Atwood New York: Anchor, 1998 (1972) trade paperback, 218 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 I don't know what to say about this book other than that I found it beautiful. Margaret Atwood knows people, and all their messed-up ways; the ones in here are often annoying, but always people you know-- probably because you could become them very easily. Or at least that's what you fear. How do we become complicit in terrible things? One of many questions Atwood tackles here, though on a much smaller scale than in The Handmaid's Tale. I could read her all day; every sentence is a gem.
	Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time by Fanny Fern London: Penguin, 1997 (1855) trade paperback, 281 pages Amazon.com purchase, September 2009 "Fanny Fern" was the pen name of Sara Willis Parton, who wrote this fictionalized version of her life and career. Fern was primarily a newspaper columnist, and this book chronicles her journey from dependent young woman to married wife to bereaved widow with children to successful entrepreneur. It's written like a series of newspaper columns, with short choppy chapters, jumping from location to location. It's a little over-sentimental at the beginning, and it takes a while to get going, but once Ruth becomes a newspaper columnist and starts navigating the 19th-century business world, it becomes very entertaining, even if most of the characters, Ruth included, are somewhat one-dimensional. And unlike so many 19th-century novels, it doesn't end with a marriage, it begins with one, and for Ruth that makes all the difference. Steve

Next up: the Green Arrow

Never content with the low amount of work I have to do, this month I've turned my pen to another feature at Unreality SF, interviewing. In this case, Jens Deffner (USF's primary Star Trek reviewer) and I interrogated James Swallow, author of various Star Trek and Stargate fiction, especially the upcoming Titan novel Synthesis and the SGU novelization Air. Most importantly, however, he wrote the upcoming audio drama Cyberman 2 (the sequel to Nicholas Briggs's amazing 2005 miniseries), which is what all of my questions were about-- Jens did the bulk of the heavy lifting here.

"For Cyberman 2, I used the Cybermen as almost a force of nature; they're this terrible storm bearing down on the human and android characters in the story, unstoppable and apparently impossible to defeat-- so how do you prevail when faced with something like that?" Now that's how I like my Cybermen! You can read the interview here.

Steve

Identity Crisis
Writer: Brad Meltzer
Penciller: Rags Morales
Inker: Michael Bair
Letterer: Ken Lopez
Colorist: Alex Sinclair

DC Universe Timeline: 2 Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2005

(Like most comic stories, to be honest, this seems to take place contemporary to its release date.  At this point, the Infinite Crisis is rapidly approaching; it's about five months away.)

Brad Meltzer is apparently a famous (or at least best-selling) thriller novelist.  He made his comics debut with Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest, which I found fairly good, but there was one real reason I was looking forward to this book: Elongated Man.  (Well, sort of.)


Anyone who has the misfortune of discussing comic books with me for a sustained period of time will rapidly learn that one of two ongoings I own a complete run of is Justice League Europe and then proceed to roll their eyes and stop talking to me.  But the truth is that JLE introduced me to many of DC's second-string characters... and I love second-string characters, which is probably why Nite Owl is my favorite Watchman.  Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, has a fairly good run in JLE: he's treated decently by Keith Giffen and his various collaborators, he really comes into his own when Gerard Jones takes over the title; his role in the Red Winter storyline is excellent. (Someday, I'll pick up the miniseries Elongated Man: Europe '92, his only-ever title, which was penned by Jones.) But how can you not love him?  He's goofy, he's got a fabulous wife, his nose twitched when he smells a mystery, and he doesn't even bother with that secret identity malarkey.

( Let's be honest, though; Elongated Man is actually barely in this book. )

The title of the story is Identity Crisis, but despite that, it's not about protecting secret identities, it's not some story that could only apply to superheroes.  It's about personal identities: who we are and what we stand for and what we're willing to do.  And most of all, how our identities derive from those around us, lovers, parents, friends, enemies, and spouses alike.  Which is why that final panel of Ralph Dibny, like so many others in this book, just hits you in the gut.

Steve

Next up: Superman: For Tomorrow, Volume One

And this month's roundup draws to a close, with these two works of Indian literature, both read for my postcolonial literature in English seminar.

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya New York: Signet, 2002 (1954) mass market paperback, 190 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 I am pretty sure that when Kamala Markandaya sat down to write this book, the tale of an Indian peasant woman right around the time of decolonization, that she wrote a list called Terrible Things That Can Happen to an Indian Peasant Woman. Then she turned that list into an outline. The first two-thirds of this novel are pretty unrelenting in terms of the bad things that happen: famine, accusations of infidelity, famine, workers being laid off, famine, infants dying, famine, sons being worthless, more famine. At times it became annoying, but the character of Rukmani holds the book together, as a simple, believable figure doing what needs to be done to get by and never complaining. The book really picked up, however, in Part II, when Rukmani and her husband have to travel into the city, and they end up completely out of their element. It's devastatingly sad, but it's also gripping, probably because I, too, fear the city. I think also this works because in Part I, a part of you thinks that they don't have to be doing what they're doing and if they go somewhere else things would be better... but Part II shows you that's untrue, as the only way things can go is to get worse.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie New York: Random House, 2006 (1981) trade paperback, 533 pages Amazon.com purchase, August 2009 This is my third encounter with Rushdie, and this book is a much harder read than Haroun and the Sea of Stories, but it's not quite as bad as The Satanic Verses, thankfully. Being able to read it in long chunks probably helped, too. There's probably not much I can say about this book that hasn't already been said than wiser men than I, so I'll just stick to one small point: Midnight's Children is hilarious. I wasn't expecting that, though I should've known Rushdie was capable of humor after Haroun. The jokes come fast and furious, especially during Saleem's childhood; I think my favorite is about the man who kills his wife and her lover, but frightens off the traffic cop he tries to turn himself in to. I laughed so hard at that one. There's lots of good lines, too, such as this one about a growing fetus: "What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book--perhaps an encyclopedia--even a whole language..." And a whole language is exactly what Rushdie has created here.

( Summative Information for September 2009: Pick of the Month, All Books Read, All Books Acquired, Books Remaining )

Steve

Superman Batman: Absolute Power
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Penciller: Carlos Pacheco
Inker: Jesús Merino
Additional pencils: Ivan Reis
Colorist: Laura Martin
Letterer: Richard Starkings

DC Universe Timeline: 2 Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2004?

Jeph Loeb can write good comics, right?  I know this.  I've read Superman For All Seasons and The Long Halloween; he can do absolutely brilliant work.  He can, and I know it.  So what the hell happened here?


What happened here, as far as I can tell, is that Jeph Loeb ingested the entire DC Universe and then vomited all over some pages and called it a script.

( Actually, it's fanwank force meets fanwank object! )

I'm actually kind of disappointed with this review, as I don't think it adequately represents the sheer depth of loathing I have for this story, though the only way to do that might be to just say "please make it stop" a dozen times, and then I'd be too much like Tat Wood for comfort. But dang, this was awful. At least the artwork was pretty.

Steve

Next up: Identity Crisis

At long last, I have wrapped up my reviews of the Cyberman series over at Unreality SF.  I actually listened and reviewed to Conversion some time ago but never linked to it here, but there was quite a delay before I got around to listening to and reviewing Telos.  Like the first two parts, these were written, directed, and sound-designed by Nicholas Briggs, and like the first two parts, I enjoyed these a lot.

I used to prefer the 1980s Cybervoices, but these stories have really sold me on the late 1960s ones. (I think that's what is being used, anyway.) So cold and utterly emotionless, it's everything a Cyberman should be.  The bit where a Cyberman says "Cyberman" at the opening of each episode is the coolest.  (Except that for someone reason I also love David Banks. Who said I needed to be consistent?)

Steve

As faithful readers will know, I reread The Golden Compass for class this spring, and followed that up with a reread of The Subtle Knife last month. Well, this month, my exploration of His Dark Materials went into full-gear with me finishing up the series (including the spin-off books I'd never read) and also moving into the stage adaptation.

	His Dark Materials, Book Three: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman New York: Laurel Leaf, 2007 (2000) mass market paperback, 465 pages borrowed from Hayley This book, unlike the other two, has a slow start. Of course, it's also considerably longer than the other two. Unfortunately, Lyra spends about the first third of the book unconscious! Will has some stuff to do while she's conked out, of course, but not exactly a whole lot-- and like in The Subtle Knife, all of the important things are being done by characters who are not our protagonists. But this one picks up once Lyra and Will are reunited and decide to journey to the Land of the Dead: they're once again active parts of the story, driving the narrative instead of reacting to it, and they're both on top form, especially Lyra, who is at her manipulative best. All of the material in the Land of the Dead is fabulous, at turns harrowing and joyful. Once they get out, then there's of course their time with Mary Malone among the mulefa, which is great in its own way. I think Mary Malone is the most interesting character in the trilogy who's not Lyra or Will, so it's nice to see her step into prominence here. All in all, it's another excellent installment in the His Dark Materials trilogy; the start is somewhat slow and disappointing, but once the story kicks into gear, it's on par with the excellent first book. And that ending! Oh, that ending! I don't think I have ever read a line more heartbreaking than this: "He kissed her again and again, and each kiss was nearer to the last one of all."
	Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman New York: Fickling, 2003 mass market paperback, 49 pages borrowed from Hayley The majority of this slim volume is taken up by the short story "Lyra and the Birds", which tells what a fifteen-year-old Lyra and Pantalaimon get up to while the former studies at Oxford. It's a nice little story, featuring the Lyra we know and love a little older and a little wiser, though thankfully not too much of either. I like the bonus features, too, despite the fact that I'm not quite certain what they all have to do with anything.
	Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman New York: Fickling, 2008 hardcover, 96 pages borrowed from Hayley The story in this volume is nearly twice as long as that in Lyra's Oxford, which is nice. And what's better: it's about probably my two favorite supporting characters in the trilogy, Lee Scorseby the Texan aeronaut and Iorek Byrnison the armored bear! Despite being long-standing friends in the trilogy, they actually don't have all that much interaction, so it's nice to see how they came to be acquainted, which involved political conspiracies and tense shoot-outs, of course. It's a treat to revisit both of these characters; I love good double-acts, and these two are among the best. This is an excellent little addition to the His Dark Materials saga, and I really hope that we get more prequel adventures featuring these two someday.  The included boardgame is a charming piece of fun, too.
	His Dark Materials by Nicholas Wright London: Nick Hern, 2003 hardcover, 236 pages borrowed from the library In 2003, His Dark Materials was turned into a stageplay, starring Anna Maxwell Martin (who has appeared in Doctor Who but I best know from Bleak House). When I found this out, I decided to hunt down the script, as I wanted to know how a 25-year-old could play Lyra and how things like dæmons and armored bears would work on stage. I didn't really get an answer to the latter, but the former was well-addressed: the play is a flashback from the point-of-view of Lyra and Will ten years on. The play was actually done as two two-act plays, shown over subsequent nights, and even at such a length, it still struggles to fit everything into its running time. It positively rockets through the events of the novels at some points, scene changes coming with unrelenting alacrity. This occasionally serves to undercut what's going on; at least as scripted, the discovery of the dæmon-less boy (changed to Billy Costa here, just as the film version would later do) has almost so impact, when in the novels it's one of the most traumatic things I've ever read. The play also struggled to deliver the needed exposition to fit someone into Lyra's world; there are some incredibly awkward lines, especially a part where Lyra walks past a university class learning about dæmons, which is rather like attending a university class where you learn that everyone has hair and girls wear it long. I hate to be the sort of person who cries out "it's different from the book", but I think cutting Mary Malone really does hurt the story a lot; it is Serafina Pekkala who performs the role of the serpent instead, but that totally changes the significance of the act. In the novel, what Will and Lyra do is merely natural, but here it's a calculated act in Lord Asriel's war against the Authority. Indeed, I also have a problem with how the stageplay figures Asriel; at the end of the novel, you realize that he's just as misguided as any of the other characters, as his side has the right idea no more than anyone else's. But here, it seems as though he's on the same side as Lyra and Will, which isn't right at all (even aside from the fact that he murders children!). Of course, it's impossible to judge any stageplay merely from the script, and I still really wish that I could see this in performance, but it's hard to see how this could have worked successfully from what I read here. (Though the excellent cast it had in London would have done a lot to sell it, I'm sure: Anna Maxwell Martin, Russell Tovey, and Timothy Dalton!)
	The Art of Darkness: Staging the Philip Pullman Trilogy by Robert Butler London: Oberon, 2003 trade paperback, 118 pages borrowed from the library (ILL) While I was reading Nicholas Wright's script, LibraryThing's recommendation engine informed me of the existence of this, a making-of book for the stageplay.  As the script itself hadn't given much of an answer to how things like dæmons would work on stage, I turned to here.  It sort of answered my questions, but it devoted most of its time to the cast, writer, director, and rehearsals.  There are a lot of pictures, but most were headshots of actors in rehearsal; I'd liked to have seen how this actually looked on stage. (The National Theatre website has some photographs here and here.) Of course, that's probably because the book was evidently rushed out to be available for purchase at the earliest performances; the ending is underwhelming as it cuts off about two weeks before the play opens to the general public.  Despite these shortcomings, it's a good read, showing you how "the two Nicks" (Nicholas Wright, playwright, and Nicholas Hynter, director) worked to overcome the Herculean challenges of bringing something as huge as His Dark Materials to stage.  While it serves to explain away some of the oddities of the script, it made me more disappointed in it: Wright and Hynter complain that the structure of the novels is unsuited for the stage, as it takes over half of the first novel to get to the point where the adventure begins, which should happen a half-hour in at most.  This is why the adaptation has to rocket through scenes so quickly, to get to this point with all due speed.  But if this was to be a genuine stageplay, why not make it into one?  Why did the script have to be so restricted by the structure of the books?  The biggest thing Butler's book did was left me wishing that the brains behind this stage version had been more daring, not less. All that said, now I really wish I'd seen it on stage.  I want to see that drum revolve in action! Steve

Next up: Indian literature

These books were all read for the seminar on "Women and Work" in 19th-century British and American literature that I am taking right now; grouping them together seemed more than logical.

	Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft New York: Norton, 1994 (1798) trade paperback, 138 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 I think this book starts quite fantastically: Maria is in an asylum, but you don't quite know why. It seems as though she's being watched, observed by some malignant force she can't quite see. She falls into a routine there because she has to; there is no alternative. It soon settles down, however, and loses that unknown quantity; eventually, you learn exactly how Maria ended up where she was, which is less enigmatic but just as chilling in its own way. The book is unfinished, but in some ways it is a catalog of all the terrible things that can happen to a woman in the late 18th century. It generally runs a pretty even keel, and I found the way that other stories were woven into Maria's in a number of different fashions fascinating; Maria seemingly had a project to acquire as many other women's stories as she can.
	The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845) edited by Benita Eisler New York: Norton, 1998 (1977) trade paperback, 223 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 This volume collects some representative writings from "factory girls" working in Lowell, Massachusetts. As you might imagine, some of these are pretty good... some, not so much. There's a lot of pictures of how the mill system operates, many of which are quietly subversive or sarcastic, but many others are just kind of sanctimonious tales where someone learns a life lesson. But the idea of the book is quite neat: who would've thought that women working in factories would've published several issues of something like this? Despite the problems of the mills, they were quite the opportunity for most of their workers, as this book shows.
	Mary Barton: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism by Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by Thomas Recchio New York: Norton, 2008 (1848) trade paperback, 649 pages Amazon.com purchase, August 2009 This marks the third Elizabeth Gaskell novel I've had to read (after Cranford and North and South), so it's a good thing I enjoy her novels, but this one is my least favorite so far. Mary is not quite as bright as Gaskell's other protagonists, though this isn't entirely her fault, as she's been socialized with this notion of "maidenly modesty" that the novel undermines by the end-- but it's not entirely enjoyable to read about someone doing slightly stupid things you don't agree with. I laughed out loud when Mary declared her plan to win Jem Wilson's love (though I suspect that may have been Gaskell's intention). But the novel picks up once it switches from its initial social-problem plotline (something Gaskell did much better in North and South) to its largely separate thriller/mystery one (Gaskell is also better at integrating plotlines in North and South). But the thriller stuff is so good! When Mary goes to Liverpool to look for Will, I was gripped; when she followed a sailor to parts unknown "with the unquestioning docility of a little child", I was frightened for her; when Mary finally manages to testify (in more ways than one) at Jem's trial, I was captivated. (Fortunately, things turn out okay for nearly everyone involved.) Gaskell is a master of character, and Mary Barton is no exception to that, even if it's not quite as interesting as some of her later works. The best part of this book is, of course, Gaskell's use of free indirect discourse, about which I recently completed a 3,000-word paper. A full 1,500 words of the paper concerned a six-word parenthetical, "and true love is ever modest". This may be the peak of my scholarly career. And, I have to give kudos to this edition, which was edited by Professor Thomas Recchio, in whose class I was introduced to Gaskell. I have no complaints about his critical apparatus; the footnotes were in general quite helpful. Steve

Next up: His Dark Materials

Next up are the various works of science fiction and fantasy I read in September, though this excludes the myriad His Dark Materials books I read; they will get their own entry.

	The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick New York: Pantheon, 2002 (1956) hardcover, 103 pages used bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 Having decided to teach "The Minority Report" as part of my semester-long Freshman English course focusing on adaptation, I decided that I ought to own it, and I purchased the cheapest thing I could find on Amazon Marketplace that contained it. What I ended up with was a rather odd little book-- the whole book is given over to the one short story, stretched out to over a hundred pages through judicious adjustment of type size and line spacing. By comparison, it runs around fifty pages in Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick; my students would be proud. It also has its spine at the top, the text running downward in one long column. It's neat-looking, though perhaps pointless, and completely impossible to photocopy. There's some weird typography at spots, so weird that I flipped past the copyright page several times before realizing what it was. Though glad to own such a curiosity, I also wish I'd been a little more selective; I suspect that for a similar price I could have gotten a volume with many more stories. As for the story itself, I'd read it before, but it had been a good seven years; I read it in anticipation of the Spielberg film. It's an excellent story, presenting a nifty little time travel logic puzzle that takes predestination to a whole new level. Quite how easily the story glosses over the ethical questions it raises is very worrying, but I suspect it's also the point.
	Green Arrow: Heading into the Light by Judd Winick with J. Calafiore New York: DC, 2006 (2005-6) comic trade paperback, 157 pages borrowed from the library (ILL) I've occasionally wondered if there's such as thing as overdone continuity in comic books-- they are, after all, a continuous medium, so surely continuity is always par for the course? How fortunate for me, then, that Heading into the Light has seen fit to give me the answer. This story has two big continuity elements. The first is that it spins out of the events of Identity Crisis, a story I haven't read. But I soon will, I know what it's about, and it had just came out when this story ran. So that's fine. What's not fine is that the Big Bad behind this story turns out to be some guy called Merlyn. Who the heck's that? Who knows, because this story never bothers to reveal who this guy is or why he might be so ticked off at Green Arrow. I guess they have a vendetta of some sort, but nothing here sells it enough to make me care. Also: people often complain that the problem with writing Superman is that he's too powerful, and he's out of his antagonists' league. But the problem with Green Arrow is that he's not powerful, and his antagonists are always out of his league. This is at least the third volume is a row where I've seen Green Arrow and company just receive beating after beating from some antagonist with a huge advantage over him. I'm getting tired of it. And Connor is fricking hospitalized yet again. Get a new deal, Winick. This book is penciled by four different people, but specific credits aren't given to specific bits, so I have no way of telling who did the bit of the book where the art ceases to be dire. Also, I've no idea which part J. Calafiore wrote, but it seems odd that he could write any issue here, as this is a pretty tight story arc all the way through.
	I, Robot by Isaac Asimov New York: Bantam, 2004 (1950) mass market paperback, 272 pages new bookstore purchase, September 2009 It struck me that to teach this book, I ought to read it-- and what's more, I ought to read the edition my students would have, which is why the cover you see here has a character not actually in the book on it. I've read this book many many times since I was a young child, and it still remains a favorite. Powell and Donovan are still a great double-act, the logic puzzles are second to none, and then there's Susan Calvin. What a masterful character, so complex: the ending of "Liar!" is still one of the most chilling things I've ever read. I find the ending of the book absolutely fascinating, and so unusual: the robots have taken over, no one knows, and that's a good thing. It's so unusual, that the book's own film adaptation undoes it in a heartbeat. It's a weirdly unfocused novel, but I think a lot of things about it make sense if you think of robotics itself as the protagonist and not any of the human characters. By the end, robotics has overcome all obstacles and achieved its biggest desire; with that thought in mind, the novel can't end any other way.
	The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum Chicago: Reilly & Lee, 1920?+ (1910) hardcover, 296 pages borrowed from the library Since my conference abstract had promised that I'd make use of this book in my paper on The Master Key, I decided to reread it for the first time in probably over a decade. I don't remember this as one of my favorites, and it's easy to see why: though I always loved Baum's journey plot, in this one the journey has no stakes, as it is simply a way to keep Uncle Henry and Aunt Em occupied while they acclimate to living in the Land of Oz. But it's by no means bad, as Baum invents his usual variety of fanciful places with fanciful creatures to occupy the protagonists; I especially liked the two Defensive Settlements, despite how creepy I found their premises (apparently Ozites with undesirable social traits are concentrated in their own cities to keep them from irritating the majority of society). The book has two standout parts. The first is Em and Henry, who get what is really their best material in the entire series. Their attempts to fit into a world that wants to serve them, a premise they are so unused to, provides Baum with some nice fodder for character work. Em's battle with the Cowardly Lion is fantastic. The second, and best, part of the book is General Guph's visits to the various evil races he is bringing into his alliance against Oz. They're some of Baum's best creations, especially the Whimsies with their pasteboard heads. I wish the invasion plotline offered more narrative drive to the rest of the book, however; Ozma just watches it unfold on her Magic Picture and frets unhelpfully. What struck me this time was how weirdly reminiscent some parts of the book were of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Dorothy's adventure in Utensia, where she's surrounded by strangely logical wordplay about utensils, reminded me of the sort of thing Lewis Carroll would engage in, and later on, Dorothy meets some oversized rabbits and engages in some shrinking and growing. Weirdest of all, however, is her petulant attitude towards the inhabitants of Bunbury when they had the audacity to be angry over the fact that Toto murdered three of their citizens and Billina pecked someone's eyes out. It's unusual for the girl who is generally conscientious, and her bad attitude here made me think of the Alice who had such clueless interaction with the animals in the Caucus-Race more than it did the Dorothy who carefully avoided doing any harm in the Dainty China Country. Steve

Next up: women and work

Slightly different format with the New Year here at Stemalum scit; from now on, I'm going to be chunking the reading roundups into 4-5 parts, to make it easier for both me and you. If I'm clever enough, I can subdivide by convenient themes. I'll be leading this month off with nonfiction of various sorts.

	On the Market: Strategies for a Successful Academic Job Search by Sandra L. Barnes Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007 trade paperback, 206 pages new bookstore purchase, August 2009 Part of my reading for my professional development class, this book is a guide for how to present yourself as you transition from graduate student to college professor.  Obviously something I don't need to be reading right now, but certainly something I should be keeping in the back of my mind as I begin to develop an academic career.  As someone who's never yet been on the academic job market, I can't yet judge whether or not this is useful advice, but it certainly seems to be-- eminently practical, and good at pointing out not only what the searcher should be doing, but what the searchees should be doing as well (and what might be bad signs at a potential hiring institution).  There are rather a lot of lists.  Now I like lists, and some of them were quite useful, but others felt like they were there just because Sandra Barnes is a scientist, and that's what scientist do.  (Weirdly, I finished the book.  Helpful and anxiety-inducing all at once; I don't want to have to think about these things yet!
	Doctor Who Magazine: Special Edition #22: 200 Golden Moments edited by Tom Spilsbury Tunbridge Wells: Panini, 2009 perfect-bound magazine, 146 pages new bookstore purchase (online), August 2009 To commemorate "Planet of the Dead," the 200th official televised Doctor Who story, Doctor Who Magazine released a retrospective of all 200 stories, offering a "golden moment" (or four) from each each of them, going all the way back to An Unearthly Child (or 100,000 B.C. as DWM would have you believe).  A team of Doctor Who writers tackled these, each of them offering up something joyous even in the most dire of stories.  Even in Timelash.  As a result, it's a sheer joy to read-- as Tom Spilsbury claims in the introduction, Doctor Who really is the greatest television show ever made.  Of course, some people pick the wrong moments (the golden moment in "Fear Her" is obviously the bit where the Doctor sticks his finger in the marmalade jar), but that can't be helped-- as as Spilsbury says, you could do a whole 'nother 146-page special easy.  I did get annoyed at the number of golden moments that seemed predicated on what children across the country "must have" done (such as the one for Revenge of the Cybermen, where the golden moment clearly ought to be the bit where the Cyber-Leader says "Cybermen do not subscribe to any theory of morality" anyway); I find it hard to get excitied by some hypothetical child's reaction.  My constant rallying cry to my students comes to mind here: give me specific examples or get out!  But mostly this is a joyous celebration of a television show that has provided us with far, far more than 200 golden moments-- and will hopefully provide us with at least 200 more.
	How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing by Paul J. Silvia Washington, DC: APA, 2008 (2007) trade paperback, 149 pages Amazon.com purchase, August 2009 Another book required for professional development, here Paul Silvia reveals the secret to how to write a lot: writing a lot.  That's it.  If you want to write a lot, you just have to sit down and do it.  Go.  Write a lot. The slimness of this idea accounts for the slimness of this volume, and Silvia even pads it out with a chapter on how to write well, which alternates between good advice (don't use pointless jargon) and silly (good writers use dashes-- if that's the case, then I am surely among the best).  But the fundamentals are strong: Silvia says that to write a lot, one must pick out a time to write, make a schedule, and stick to it no matter what.  This is excellent advice, but I immediately came up with a dozen reasons I couldn't do it.  Then I went onwards and found out that he had anticipated all of my objections and shot them down.  Well, phooey. Silvia is a writer himself, of course, and he knows what's up, which makes this book work.  It helps that he is also funny (favorite line: "Unlike fashion, APA style lacks police."), and he's peppered the book with New Yorker cartoons. I have to point out, however, that I'm still not following Silvia's advice... but that might account for most of my current problems.
	Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson New York: Delta, 2008 (2007) trade paperback, 390 pages borrowed from Hayley Hayley forced this book on me, and like all things that are forced on me, I decided to hate it.  But I had to read it, as I was trapped in an airport and I'd exhausted all other reading material.  I was initially skeptical-- the first few chapters are pretty basic, and Wilson doesn't help his case with his cheesy "you too can be a scientist!" rhetoric-- but before I knew it, I was warming up to the book.  A lot.  Wilson's argument is that evolution manifests itself in all aspects of our lives, society, and culture, from dung beetles to religion, from homicide to politics, and at first I was skeptical, but he just kept piling on example after example, and I started thinking, You know, maybe there's something in this.  Then I found myself noticing evolution everywhere I went: people in my Women and Work class were wondering why a group of female factory workers were so stringently self-policing, and I knew that evolutionary theory would provide the answer!  I was listening to a story on Morning Edition about an Army guy who wrote a book about training Afghani troops, and he said that they were really good at fighting individually, but not as a unit, and I thought, Man, I wonder what evolutionary theory would say about that?  Slowly and unwillingly, I had become an evolutionist! The book isn't all roses; like I said, I was little leery of Wilson's tone sometimes.  He did pen one of the most unfortunate sentences I've ever come across: "Learning about natural selection is like having a premature orgasm.  You think it will take a long time and lead to a tremendous climax, but then it's over almost as soon as it began!"    And sometimes I found myself worried that I had been swayed only because I wasn't familiar enough with the material he was discussing to muster a counter-argument; I think it's telling that I was most unconvinced by the (very brief) section on evolutionary theory in literature, but he's co-edited a whole book about that (The Literary Animal), so I suppose I'll have to seek that out.  But perhaps the biggest endorsement for this book comes from an encounter I had in the EGSA lounge.  One thing Wilson rails against is the thinking that evolutionary theory leads straight to eugenics and genocide, when it can actually have a bevy of positive applications.  Well, I was reading the book over lunch and one of my colleagues noticed it and said that the scary thing about evolutionary theory was eugenics.  But as Wilson shows, there's so much to evolutionary theory than that-- and this book is an excellent first step to recognizing that. Steve

Next up: science fiction and fantasy

It's that time of the (bi)month, when I tackle the latest alternate Companion Chronicle for good old Unreality SF.  This time around it is Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles #4.04: The Pyralis Effect, written by George Mann (The Solaris Books of New Science Fiction) and starring Lalla Ward as the second Romana.

Last month I was complaining about Richard Dawkins to Andrew, claiming that he gives atheists a bad rap, and Andrew said, "And of course he's married to Lalla Ward."  This reveals the true reason for my vehement dislike of Dawkins, of course: I am not married to Lalla Ward.

Steve