Art History: The Croglin Vampire

This is one of my all-time favourite fantasy art images:

The Croglin Vampire, copyright © Les Edwards

The title of the picture is 'The Croglin Vampire', the artist is Les Edwards (whose website I've become intimately re-acquainted with over the past few weeks), and I first saw this picture in a copy of White Dwarf magazine, years and years ago, when I was but a scrawny, spotty, wargaming teenage geek.

It was part of a double-page spread of assorted fantasy art, and it stood out from the rest of the artwork on display by a mile. Atmospherically I think it's a rather excellent piece; the vampire positively oozes menace, and the portrayal is a far cry from the traditional starched-collar and evening dress of the classic-but-tired Bela Lugosi look. Incidentally, on Les' website he explains that the image isn't meant as a tribute to Nosferatu, but is based on a 'true story'... chilling.

The first time I met Les in person was at one of the first Fantasycons I attended, I think it was in Birmingham about ten or twelve years ago. I think I recognised him from a panel he'd been on the day before, and determined to say hello, I screwed up my fan-boy courage, and crossed over to the table where he was sitting.

"Um, hi." I said. "I'm a big fan of your work."

"Oh. Thanks." said Les.

Okay... different tack, perhaps?

"I, er, I particularly like The Croglin Vampire. Saw it in White Dwarf years ago..." I stammered.

"Oh. Thanks." said Les.

And that was pretty much that.

Of course, that was just my first stab at conversation, and once I'd started running Les's website (and that of his artistic alter-ego, Edward Miller) I quickly discovered that both Les and his lovely wife Val are both incredibly warm and friendly people. That slightly subdued public exterior hides a sharp and biting wit - as you can probably tell from some of Les's images, particularly his Xmas cards - and sitting next to the two of them at the Fantasycon banquet is definitely to be recommended for entertainment value, if you can somehow wangle an invite to the appropriate PS Publishing table...

Did I mention that Les and Val are rather wonderfully generous as well? When Jo and I announced (prematurely, foolishly) that we'd almost finished the house extension (this was back in January; how we laughed at our naivité when we started in on the decorating in February...) Val and Les told us to pick out a set of art prints to brighten up our bare walls. Of course, one of the ones I insisted on picking was The Croglin Vampire. It's going to hang on the wall on my office / study, and will serve as a constant reminder of the wisdom of occasionally saying 'hello' to strangers at conventions. Even if it does make you sound like a fan-boy...

Anyway, that whole long-winded preamble is my way of announcing that I've finished the re-vamps of both www.lesedwards.com and www.edwardmiller.co.uk. Design-work by Les himself - so naturally it looks fantastic - programming and html by me. Well, except for some of the trickier bits of PHP, which I had to sub-contract to my mate Andy, who's been doing this sort of thing in his sleep for years. Unlike me. I started learning the lingo in November...

The official go-live date is tomorrow, but both sites are actually live now, so you can get yourself a sneaky preview if, like me, you're actually online at 9.30 p.m. on New Year's Eve.

(What? You are? Bugger off an have a beer, you fool!)

December 31, 2006 | Filed Under Art | 2 Comments

Still free on January 6th…

Looks like the cynical bastards at the F.A. were merely dangling the possibility of a reprieve for Bury FC in order to escape the pre-Xmas bad publicity after all.

Bury FC Ah, well. We made the blunder, now we've got to take it on the chin. Although it looks like if you do make an honest mistake, then doing the decent thing - 'fessing up and apologising - doesn't hold any water with the bureaucratic types. So let this be a lesson to everyone: next time you think you might get away with a mistake you've made, don't tell! Honesty is punishable! Lie, cheat and steal like everyone else, it's the only way forward... apparently.

What, bitter? Me?

In other news: have just about finished off the last of the Yuletide leftovers, so it's back on the health regime as of Monday. Luckily I already joined a gym last November and have been a few times since, so when I get back down there next week the staff might recognise me and not smirk quite so much.

Oh, and this year's Xmas dinner for two was a triumph, if I do say so myself. Thanks to a set of cooking instructions I found on a website somewhere, the turkey didn't come out dry as the Antarctic(*) and tasting like an old cardboard box, and the assorted roast veggies were done to a 't'.

The seasonal TV highlight for me was definitely the QI Xmas Special (and I also received a copy of QI: The Book of General Ignorance [Amazon] from Jo, which was most welcome, and most enlightening, too). Dracula kinda sucked (sorry, couldn't resist), but The Ruby in the Smoke was watchable, and The Hogfather was quite jolly.

I've solved my coffee-machine quandary - for the short-term at least - with the purchase of a Russell Hobbes filter machine for the not-so bank-breaking price of £17.49, from good old Sainsbury's. Oh, and a jar of Illy ground, just in case those beans turn out to have crumbled away to nothing or something...

Also managed to find a bit more reading time than usual; I finished the charmingly disgraceful Vesuvius Club [Amazon] and have now taken the plunge and started in on Before They Are Hanged [Amazon]; I'm about 55 pages in so far and loving it. I'll be writing a couple more book-ish entries this weekend with any luck, once I've put the finishing touches to the brand new Les Edwards and Edward Miller websites, which will be going live on Monday. Speaking of which, best get on, eh?

So, a Happy New Year to everyone, in case I don't post again before then.

(*) Driest place on Earth. No lie. It's in QI: The Book of General Ignorance and everything...

December 29, 2006 | Filed Under Books, Drink, Food, Life, Sport | 2 Comments

New Arrivals - mid December '06

Another batch of books have come in for the Books Received section of UKSFBN, and once again there are a couple of pearls included that I'd particularly like to bring to your attention:

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

This one's going to cause me a real scheduling headache. Joe Abercrombie's debut novel, The Blade Itself was my definite fantasy highlight of 2006. It was an absolutely superb low-fantasy saga; chock full of action, adventure and incident, shot through with a very dry, witty sense of humour, and with none of the pomposity that the heroic fantasy genre is so prone to. Great reading, absolutely flew through it, Jo loved it as well. Part 2? Hell, yeah! (or, as Jo quite literally said upon picking up the book not ten minutes ago, "oooh! oooh!")

So, this one really demands to be shunted right to the front of my 'must read' queue... except that K.J. Parker's Evil for Evil is already occupying that spot, and I definitely want to read that one for pretty much the same reasons. And then I've got the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, John Connolly's Nocturnes and Gail Martin's The Summoner coming up hard on the rails... damn! Decisions, decisions...

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes

Another Gollancz proof that arrived in the same batch as the Abercrombie. I've been hearing some mixed background buzz about this one for a while; some say 'good', some say 'not sure'. But it looks like it'll fit into an oeuvre that I do have a definite affection for; you'd probably have to call it 'quasi-Victorian humourous melodrama' or something. Or then again, maybe not...

But you know the stuff I mean, anyway: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Mark Gattiss' The Vesuvius Club - which coincidentally I'd started reading the day before this one turned up - for instance. And I could theoretically include the recent Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist in there as well, although to be honest that one was comparatively top-heavy on the melodrama and rather devoid of humour.

Hmmm. More headaches...

No Dominion by Charlie Huston

Not one that'll immediatly challenge for must-read top-spot, but a definite medium-term contender. This is the second in Charlie Huston's current series about a vampire-gang-dominated New York; no place for a determined loner vampire like Joe Pitt, who just wants to be left alone to live his un-death in peace. But his staunch neutrality makes him useful - and also potentially dangerous - to a whole range of factions in the continually ongoing gang turf war, so peace and quiet are likely to be two commodities in short supply.

Thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series, Already Dead, after Jo bought a US copy from Amazon and then hit me with it until I agreed to read it. Urban vamp meets hard-boiled private eye, with everything wrapped up in a dark, grungy atmosphere that you could choke on. Orbit will be releasing the first couple of volumes in the UK early next year.

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And finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the three latest titles from PS Publishing, which also came in today: Julian - A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson, Flavors of My Genius by Robert Reed, and The Voyage of Night Shining White by the much talked-about Chris Roberson. All, as it happens, with stunning artwork from a certain Les Edwards (or Edward Miller) as well.

'Julian - A Christmas Story' by Robert Charles Wilson

'The Voyage of Night Shining White' by Chris Roberson

All three look very interesting indeed, so that's three more for the already-groaning t.b.r. shelf... one day I really will have to win the lottery, just so I can actually afford the time to sit down and read all this potentially rather excellent material. I tell you, it's the only way it's ever going to happen...

December 22, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 10 Comments

Disaster! Well, maybe…

I was planning a bit of a day out on January 6th. My local football team, Bury FC, the team I've supported since I was 13, had actually made it through to the third round of the F.A. Cup, for the first time in years, as far as I can remember (oh yeah... football-atheists, you might as well look away now, there won't be much in the rest of this post to interest you...)

No 3rd Round for us this year. Unless... Might not sound like much, but for a lowly League Two team with minimal support (Manchester United, Manchester City and Bolton Wanderers are all just down the road, so guess which teams most of the kids in the area end up following..?) and who have flirted with relegation to non-league status - and even complete bankruptcy - several times in recent years, it was a pretty Big Deal.

What's more, we'd been drawn at home - giving us the slimmest of potential advantages - against the (relatively mighty) Ipswich Town, a Championship side and therefore a club likely to bring a decent amount of travelling support to help swell our meagre coffers. And to cap it all, fantasy author James Barclay, whose website I run, happens to be a lifelong Ipswich supporter... so much taunting had already ensued, as you can imagine, and we were both looking forward to a flurry of text message exchanges on the day - me sending live from Gigg Lane, he responding from Somewhere Down South.

And then, yesterday, grim news indeed: Bury have been thrown out of the cup, for fielding an ineligible player in round two. Shock. Disappointment. Resignation... (our manager immediately offered his, but the board refused to accept it...)

The details: Bury, as a small club with little or no money with which to fund long-term player contracts, often have to arrange loan deals to bring players in from other clubs. One recent arrival was a lad called Stephen Turnbull, on loan from Hartlepool United. Before the second round game against Chester City, our manager asked Hartlepool's manager for permission to use the player in the match, and was given verbal permission. The secretary at Hartlepool then said they'd send through the relevant paperwork to Bury and the Football Association, but for whatever reason, that didn't happen.

The mistake was spotted after the match, by an official at Bury, and the manager decided - very honestly - to report the omission to the F.A., and they then decided that, rather than fining the club - as they did Leeds United for fielding one too many loan players in a recent match - they'd throw us out of the competition and reinstate Chester instead.

Just a bit hit harsh, I reckon. Honest mistake and all that, hands-up, said we're sorry. Not like we were told we couldn't field the player and did anyway, eh? Bit of paper went astray is all. Don't the F.A. accept emails? Do they even know we've had the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first..?

Anyway, apparently the fact that the F.A. has allowed the club to appeal the decision is "an unusual step". So there's a hearing on the 28th, and our F.A. Cup fate will be decided then.

Mind you, I really hope that the F.A. isn't just holding out false hope there (I have a nasty suspiscion that they've allowed the appeal to go ahead just so they don't look like the bad guys and have to take a load of cheap media flak in the run up to Xmas) and that there actually is a chance we can get the decision rescinded.

Although that in turn would be a bit hard on the Chester City supporters, who will have been celebrating their reinstatement all week, and awkward for the Ipswich Town supporters as well, who won't know which set of travel arrangements to make, and may have had to change them once already.

And there's precedent in both positive and negative directions, apparently. This article on an Arsenal fan-site mentions that West Ham were made to replay a cup game a few years ago after fielding an ineligible player, but then goes on to say that West Ham ladies were expelled from the league cup as recently as this season for the same offence, and the FA apparently showed "leniency" by not fining the club on top, because they volunteered the information. And Everton were booted out for fielding ineligible players the first two times they entered the FA Cup, in 1887 and 1888...

So it's basically a bugger all round, and a situation that could easily have been avoided, most likely if the officials at Bury FC had cheated the system and kept their gobs shut over the Xmas period, letting the F.A. - who obviously aren't interested enough to modernise their systems or, say, get their own officials to check the loan players' registrations in advance of the match - remain in their usual state of perpetual ignorance until it was far too late to do anything about it except shrug, fine the club and let us get on with it.

Such is the price of honesty, I guess. And what sort of message does that send out?

December 21, 2006 | Filed Under Sport | 2 Comments

Attack of the Test-Tube Alien!

Update, Jan 2008: Over a year since I wrote this post, and I'm still getting fresh comments. Amazing...

If you've just arrived and are looking for help with a troublesome test-tube alien, please note:

I've got nothing whatsoever to do with the manufacturers. Their PR people just sent me one to 'review' over a year ago.
I can't help you if you've lost your registration number. Try contacting the manufacturers, 4kidz or www.alienadoptionworld.com. Same applies for any other miscellaneous alien behaviour questions.
If you're wondering what the flashing lights mean, see comment #2 (below).
If you've lost your 'sloog' alien food, don't panic, mine grew fine without using more than the first packet.

And now, on with my original post:

Stuck for that last-minute present for the sci-fi fan in your life? Try a Test Tube Alien for size...

I was sent one of these to birth and nurture by the UK marketing agency who represents the manufacturer, and have just spent a happy ten minutes following the instructions and sloshing it around in water.

Stage 1

The wee beastie arrives in some chunky plastic packaging. Careful with those scissors, kids!

Stage 2

Inside the pack there's a test-tube containing a weird, chalky coccoon-like object, three silver-foil packets of 'sloog' (alien food) a set of instructions (you'll need those...) and an alien registration card.

Stage 3

Pour in the water, and all sorts of interesting chemical reactions start to happen... all over the work-top. Er... time to re-locate to the sink. (Note: emergency anti-alien spray lurking in background in case things turn nasty.) But wait... is that something emerging through the murk..?

Stage 4

Yes! It lives! IT LIIIIVES! Well, it flashes, anyhow...

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...although apart from that, it pretty much just sits there and looks at you [*]. Okay, so it's not quite a Wii, but what it lacks in interactivity it probably makes up for in geek-cred. And the whole fizzing coccoon thing is quite interesting, plus, it's probably science of some sort, which means it's educational and therefore good for you... right?

And hey, give it a couple of weeks of sloshing around in sloog and it'll grow up to be a bigger alien in a test-tube [*]. That is, if you remember to feed it. And if you make sure it gets enough light / dark (12 hours of each per day). And you can register it online as long as, unlike me, you manage to hold on to your alien registration card and not lose it amongst the clutter on your desk...

So there you go. Available from Amazon, although you'll probably have to leg it down to your nearest Toys-R-Us or Woolworths or somewhere if you want to get this particular weird gadget in for someone for Xmas.

[*] Update: 21.12 - Hey, the wee beastie is only 24 hours old and already it seems to be evolving... weird, scaly lumps and protruberances are appearing all over its torso, and it appears to be growing a tail... (memo to self and others: don't tip it upside-down to get a better look, the plastic stopper isn't quite water-tight... )

December 20, 2006 | Filed Under Stuff | 46 Comments

More season's greetings…

I also love being on PS Publishing's Xmas card list:

The artwork here is by Tomislav Tikulin, who also painted the striking cover of the recent PS title The Voyage of Night Shining White by Chris Roberson.

December 20, 2006 | Filed Under Art | Leave a Comment

Santa Snatched by Naked Harpy (season's greetings!)

I love being on Les Edwards' Xmas card list...

Always the best card of the year by far... :)

December 19, 2006 | Filed Under Art | 2 Comments

Watched 'Constantine', quite liked it. 'Elektra' was better…

This Friday night just gone, Jo was out at her work Xmas do and unlikely to return until the early hours. So, after spending a couple of hours of overtime on my current Big Project, I settled down to spend a few hours in the company of my usual vice-of-choice when the missus is out: Civilization IV (Warlords expansion) on the laptop, a couple of bottles of whatever beer happens to be in the fridge (in this case Leffe brun, with an option of an Old Ember for later on) and then I started channel-flicking on Sky.

Didn't take me long to find Elektra on Sky Movies 4; a film that I didn't rush to go see when it came out on account of having thoroughly enjoyed the comic and therefore wanting to avoid the let-down of paying money to go see some ropey adaptation full of o.t.t. SFX and with not much else going for it.

So I'm glad to report that I was pleasantly surprised; for the first half of the movie, at least. It was dark, almost sinister, and very, very stylish. Oriental demons cropping up all over the place, martial artistes leaping all over the screen, Jennifer Garner (a handsome woman, you have to admit) in that outfit... generally speaking it was all good stuff. And then... well, I don't want to commit wanton spolierage for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, so let's just say that human interest raised its all-too predictable Hollywood-shaped head, and everything got a bit too twee and nice for my liking. So I kept half an eye on the fight scenes, concentrated on guiding my fledgling empire through its tricky early expansion phase instead.

And then, scheduled straight after Elektra on the same channel, came Constantine. Now, I'll freely admit that I've had truly massive reservations about this movie, pretty much from the day that I heard Keanu "plank" Reeves was going to be playing John Constantine. It stems from my deep and abiding love of the Hellblazer series (as aforementioned here) and the fact that, well, Reeves is just so totally wrong for the part of the chain-smoking, wise-cracking, demon-thwarting (note: thwarting, not arse-kicking), British anti-hero John Constantine that I don't even know where to begin...

And you know what? It was every single bit as crap as I'd feared it would be, from the first blatant Exorcist-rip-off exorcism scene, through to the shoe-horning in of every single major plot strand and throw-away appearance of just about every interesting support character from the first sixty or seventy issues of the comic series; from the piss-poor character adaptation to the lousy attention to established detail.

Okay, I'll admit that some of the effects were quite interesting, as techno eye-candy goes, and again there was a nicely dark, atmospheric feel to most of the movie. But it just could have been so much better in so many ways, you know..?

And then, about a quarter of the way through - and just before I was going to reach for the remote and resort to MTV2 instead - I realised there was one long-established comics trope that could actually save the day and turn this execrable desecration of my favourite comics series into a half-watchable action movie.

So... what if, you know, what if, this was actually an Elseworlds-style alternative take on the whole Constantine mythos? What if the central concept of the movie itself was one big 'what if'? As in: "What if John Constantine was a wooden-faced American with a shocking inability to emote, limited vocal talent (but an oh, so photogenically square jaw), an all-too predictable penchant for big guns and gimmicks, and an aversion to proper khaki trench-coats? How would that look..?"

At that point, it did actually become half-watchably bearable. Looking at it as an average Hollywood action movie, something to put on in the background on a Friday night (as I made in-roads on the technology tree and wondered whether making a land-grab for the mineral-rich area on the Aztecs' border would over-stretch my economy and stifle my scientific development into the medieval period), it was... okay. So yeah, once I'd managed to put myself through the aforementioned mental gymnastics I kinda, sort of, quite liked it. But by 'eck, I had to suspend a whole Sci-Fi Channel mini-series' worth of disbelief in the first place...

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, by 1.30 a.m. I'd managed to pull off my usual trick of over-developing my core cities whilst neglecting my military build-up, so when the massed (and I do mean massed) ranks of Egyptian war chariots and horse archers appeared on the eastern horizon, my paltry defences were set to be swept aside in record time, and that was looking like the end of Asoka's Indian Empire... so I very sensibly switched off when Jo came home, and went to bed.

December 18, 2006 | Filed Under Gaming, Movies | 4 Comments

File under: Oddstuff

It's all gone a bit quiet, I know, but I do have a very good excuse: I've got my head down on my current work project. It's a major re-vamp of both www.lesedwards.com and www.edwardmiller.co.uk, the site(s) of multiple BFS Award-winning fantasy artist Les Edwards and his alter-ego Edward Miller.

The new sites look great (they should do, Les designed them himself...), they go live on January 1st, and I'm currently in full-on data-entry mode, getting all the images into the new PHP driven, MySQL back-end; so I'm afraid there's not much time for full-on blogging just now.

But here are a couple of moments of oddness that crossed my radar recently that I thought I'd share. In the immortal (and no doubt slightly mis-quoted) words of Calvin, best friend of Hobbes: "I like to make everyone's day a little bit more surreal"...

"With this molar, I thee wed..."

Those wacky boffin-chappies have worked out a way to grow bone from cell cultures taken from wisdom teeth. Of course, this all has a very serious, medical application, but they've decided to draw attention to the potential of the technique by growing bone rings for five volunteer couples, who can then exchange them as a sign of their love, affection and macabre interest in wearing each others' body-parts...

Man builds Dalek, scares students silly

Okay there's this guy in York, right, who doesn't like students very much, yeah? Sick of them cluttering up his street, looking scruffy, discussing Nietszche and nuclear physics, all that crap.

So what does he do? Well, the same thing just about any sane person would: he builds a dalek, hides inside it and screams "EXTERMINATE!" whenever a student comes near. Um, yeah. As you would...

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Say, here's a thought: send me links to odd stuff!

email me!

You know you want to...

December 15, 2006 | Filed Under Odd | 3 Comments

Dresden Files trailer #2 on YouTube

The second trailer for the Sci-Fi Channel's forthcoming series adaptation of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files is now available to watch at YouTube:

Hmm. I'm still not 100% convinced. I think I'd have to see more of the look & feel of the bad guys and a lot more principle character interaction before I'm completely sold.

Thanks to George Walkley of Jim Butcher's UK publisher, Orbit Books, for the heads-up.

December 13, 2006 | Filed Under TV | Leave a Comment

2007 - The Year of the Short Story?

I'm anticipating a significant up-turn in the amount of reading time I have available as of the start of 2007. The year-long decorating project is almost done (short version: we had a major house extension built between July '05 to Feb '06 and have been painting over bare plaster ever since...) and that should give me my Sunday afternoons back, for reading, blogging, computer gaming, etc. (cue my lovely wife, Jo, muttering something along the lines of "nice try, mister..." as she dusts off the list marked 'additional chores: urgent'...)

So anyway, I'm hoping to read a lot more short fiction next year.

I know from long experience, both as a bookseller and, latterly, a review 'zine editor, that short fiction as a general form does have its detractors. Mostly they're folks who say that they prefer to invest longer amounts of time in the fiction they read; that they like to get involved in a fulll-length novel and really connect with the characters, plots and situations; or, rather typically, that they "don't like the way short stories always seem to stop just as they're getting interesting".

Well, I agree with the first few sentiments expressed, but I agree more with the countless commentators (I'm really not going to try to claim credit for this as any sort of original thought on my part) who point out that these folks have rather missed the point of good short fiction with that last objection.

A good short story delivers a short, sharp, hit - in what could be either or both of the narcotic and pugilistic senses - of, well, something. Catharsis, revelation, speculation, imagery, intrigue, bafflement... something. And if that means that they do stop "just as they're getting interesting", well, perhaps that was the whole point of the story; perhaps the writer fully intended to leave the reader hanging, suspended in a moment of contemplation, intrigued and desiring further resolution. That's often how and why some short stories stay with you long after you've read them, a pin-prick of bright memory amidst the bulk of dull, grey matter, and so forth.

Fair enough, if that's not your cup of tea - if, say, you'd generally rather listen to a two-hour concept album than a compilation mix-CD - then that's fine, of course. But personally, I love that hit of... whatever... and as I am rather hopelessly addicted to variety in both literature and music, and short fiction surely seems the best way to satisfy the former craving.

And I reckon there are enough good writers out there - and enough publishers with the good sense to make sure that their work sees the light of day - to keep me well-stocked with premium material pretty much all year round, if I wanted to. I know I've got any number of anthologies and collections on the shelves that I've yet to dive into.

I'm reading the latest two issues of PS Publishing's always excellent (and multiple award-winning) Postscripts magazine at the moment [declaration of possible bias: I'm a PS staffer, having run the PS website for a number of years, but hey, ask anyone how good Postscripts is and you'll hear the same thing, and anyway, why the hell haven't you subscribed yet..?] and then I've got five issues of D.F. Lewis's Nemonymous lined up as well. And I'm thinking of trying to pick up pretty much one of everything published by Andrew Hook's Elastic Press - although I can already make a start on Mike O'Driscoll's The Unbecoming, which I snapped up in the Fantasycon dealers' room - and then Chris Teague's Pendragon Press will most likely be raided as well.

Not that I'll be giving up on novels entirely of course. There's just far too much must-read meterial already on the shelf, and a whole stack of potentially great stuff lined up for next year. But I would like to broaden my horizons - horribly cramped as they've become due to the lack of commuter reading-time since May and the aforementioned self-inflicted slave labour - and what better way to satiate my fiction-flavoured cravings than with a whole series of short, sharp hits?

Feel free to recommend particulalry strong collections and / or anthologies in the comments there, folks (and yes, I have already read Joe Hill's Twentieth Century Ghosts, and yes, it was bloody marvellous...)

December 12, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 6 Comments

A Joyous Yuletide to you all…

Yeah, it's that time of year again. Shops are full of even more tat than usual and the streets are packed with even more stressed-out, potentially homicidal forced-shoppers, and all the repeats are back on the telly. So I thought I'd dig out this piece I first scribbled down back in December '02 and give it a dusting-off. (New for 2006: Illustrations!)

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So how will you be celebrating the festive season?

Speaking as a good and devout Pagan Hedonist, I'm going to have to get my backside in gear. After all, it's the solstice festival on the 21st, which is only a couple of weeks away, even though this year's solstice isn't actually occuring until 00.22 (GMT) on the 22nd, astronomically speaking.

And I'm torn between which of the the sun gods traditionally associated with the season (Appolo, Attis, Baal, Dionysus, Helios, Hercules, Horus, Mithra, Osiris, Perseus, Theseus) I should be honouring and persuading not to descend forever into the underworld. Tricky, that. So many to choose from...

Maenads, pre-raphaelite style The Maenads. Fun girls, if you don't get on their bad side...

I could of course follow the Greek model and celebrate the December 21st Lenaea, the "Festival of the Wild Women", which sounds kinda fun and kinky, but seeing as it commemorates poor old Dionysius, or Orpheus as he's known to his mates, being torn apart and eaten by the Meanads, then perhaps I'll pass on that one.

Although obviously the ancient traditions of killing and consuming the flesh and blood of the sacred king once his seven year reign had finished is also rooted very firmly in paganism, but I believe it generally took place round about the time of the feast of the Mother Goddess Eostre, so that's a fair way off yet. And speaking of things druidic, there's always their 'Alban Arthuan' festival, or the traditional wiccan minor sabbat, both of which occur on the 21st as well. Another couple of options there.

Then again, I could just do what the Romans did and roll the whole lot up into a general-purpose Saturnalia / "Feast of the Unconquered Sun" on the 25th. Let me see - deity born of a virgin in a cave or stable? Check. Fathered by a god? Check. Birth predicted by signs and portents - stars and what have you? Check. Yep, they all seem to meet the criteria, so I guess rolling them up into one big happy ball of sunshine would be the easiest thing to do. And the Germans did use this as the basis for their Yule festival after all. Yule meaning "wheel" of course, representing the disc of the sun - which does rather round off my multiple sun gods dilemma quite nicely...

Photo by 'toastycake', via sxc.hu Note the Egyptian influence in the pyramid styling of this traditional festive tree...

Or I could just focus on the Egyptian element this year and celebrate the feast of Isis and Osiris, or the Babylonian feast of the Son of Isis (Horus again, IIRC). Which would mean that I could legitimately use another ancient Egyptian tradition and decorate a tree in their honour. Apparently this was quite popular among the Germans as well - evergreens being sacred to the sun god and symbols of fertility in winter and all. Hey, then I could drape some holly and mistletoe around the place - berries being symbols of fertility too. Maybe even a little light snogging in the interests of appeasing the fertility spirits? Sounds like a good excuse to me.

And there's always the feast of Adam and Eve to celebrate on the 24th. I mean, those guys are about as pagan as you can get, right? The prophet Jeremiah certainly had a go at the practice of bringing a tree into the house and decking it with silver and gold in their honour, so that must boost their credibility no end. I think I'll stop short of burning a yule log, though. I don't have a fireplace to burn it in. Or a druid-blessed axe. Or a sacred oak tree to cut a bough from in the first place, for that matter.

Photo by 'Rob W', via sxc.hu "It's Wild Hunt time again? Dude! Awesome!"

But I will keep an eye out for Wotan and the Wild Hunt, crossing the sky in a sleigh drawn by reindeer... or was it goats..? Either way, those guys are always good for a laugh. Liven up a party no end, they will.

I certainly intend to eat lots and drink lots in the fine traditions of the Roman Bacchanalia. And if any mummers happen to stop by my house whilst - again in the traditional pagan Roman manner - they wander the world between now and the Kalends of January singing songs of praise to Sol Invictus, I might even invite them in for a bite to eat. Small parcels of pastry-covered sweetmeats ought to go down well.

And just to prove that Pagan Hedonism is multi-culturally welcoming and knows no geographical boundaries, I think I'll borrow an old Chinese tradition and hang a sock by the fire for the red-jacketed hearth spirit to fill with presents. That would be nice. And I'll spread the joy a little as well, by giving presents to my family and friends. Borrowing from the Romans again there, but I'm sure they won't mind. Very open-minded, the Romans. Accepted just about anybody - and their religion - as long as they paid their taxes and kept their nose out of other people's business...

Anyway, I expect those of you with Christian leanings will have your own, entirely unique and special holy days to keep and traditions to observe. After all, you've never been all that fond of getting along and joining in with we Pagan Hedonists, have you? Burn us at the stake as soon as look at us, you lot. So, something in keeping with the Jewish origins of your sect, maybe? A quiet hymn or two, perhaps? Something solemn and subdued? None of this debauchery and excess for you lot, right?

Photo by 'dirkf' via sxc.hu "Fertility Symbols! Getcher modest pagan fertility symbols! Snog the missus!"

Come to think of it, you'll probably have exchanged modest gifts and pleasantries already on December 6th, no? What, you missed Saint Nicholas' day? He was one of your lot, wasn't he? Ah, unless you're still following the 350AD dictates of Pope Julius I to observe Christ's Mass on the 25th instead. You are? What, even though the historical Joshua Ben Joseph was probably born in September? Oh, okay. Anyhow, have a nice time in church. At midnight. When the rest of us are down the pub...

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No, but seriously though, whatever your leanings, superstitions and procilvities at this time of year, a very heartfelt "Bah, humbug!" to the lot of you... ;)

December 8, 2006 | Filed Under Life | 2 Comments

Potted bookshelf, episode 1.1

The header graphic on this blog is a selection of books - thirty-three in all, if I've counted correctly - that I've read in recent months. Here's a quick reaction paragraph or two on the first few, taken from the left-hand side:

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

I won this one in the last Fantasycon raffle, and I'm very glad I did. It's a young adult fantasy, with possibly a bit more emphasis on the 'adult' than you might first expect, especially in terms of some of the word-play and humour, and it was very, very good indeed.

It's basically about a girl who runs away from her adoptive home with her homicidal goose after accidentally burning it to the ground (her home, not the goose), then falls in with all sorts of spies, rogues and scoundrels (including a famous highwayman) and ends up getting involved in sundry shady shennanigans involving anarchists, floating coffee houses and the Duke of Mandelion's beautiful but manipulative sister. A great read, really carried me along. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman

This is one of Rickman's pre-Merrily Watkins novels, but it's set in the same milieu - in fact, one of the lead characters in Man in the Moss, Moira Cairns, has a walk-on part in the latest couple of MW novels - and it bears all the hallmarks of the later series.

There's a rural setting with an ancient, pagan tradition in which the old ways smack into against the twentieth century with a hell of a bang. Well-rounded, three-dimensional characterisation - as you'd expect from Rickman - and although the plot builds slowly and carefully, it reaches a satisfyingly impressive crescendo. I'd sum this one up as a great fireside read: take it with you next time you're likely to be holed up in an out-of-the-way country pub for the weekend and just let yourself go with the flow. What? You don't hole up in country pubs for the weekend? You really should, you know.

Ring by Stephen Baxter

I have a bit of a love it or leave it relationship with Stephen Baxter's work that, come to think of it, pretty much epitomises my reaction to science fiction in general: if it's something wildly speculative and endlessly imaginative I generally love it, but if it tends towards near-future, extrapolation of current scientific thinking etc. then... meh. Hence I can't quite bring myself to read Baxter's NASA exploration-themed novels (and don't get me started on the sentient mammoths), but give me something in the Xeelee sequence and I'm happy from page one onwards.

And Ring is one of the key Xeelee novels, tying together the majority of the loose strands and deliberate open loops of the earlier novels, and together with Vacuum Diagrams neatly encapsulating the whole of Baxter's incredible future history of mankind. Fantastic, fabulous stuff. Very highly recommended. (Watch what happens now, someone will leave a comment patiently explaining that Baxter's NASA-novels are part of the Xeelee sequence too, just told from a much, much closer narrative perspective...)

The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

One of the very best writers in any genre, mainstream or otherwise, working today, Joyce's prose is just utterly incredible. Of course, he has a bit of an unfair advantage; as a lecturer in creative writing he must know his craft quite literally inside out. If you've not read anything by Graham Joyce before then go, do it now. You won't regret it for a minute.

Okay, I'll try to rein in the hyperbole for a minute and do a quick description. The Tooth Fairy is about growing up. It's one of those teenage coming-of-age, sexual-awakening novels, but it's not about the issues and the angst and the sullen sulks, so much as the Mystery (with a deliberate capital 'M') and the magic and the sense of wonder. Cathartic, rich, incredibly true. I'm hyperboling again, aren't it? Damn, but it's hard not to. There have been rumours of a movie version for a while. Thankfully, this wasn't it. And neither was this.

The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay

This is one of Kay's ongoing, non-sequential series of loosely historically-linked novels set in an alternative / parallel version of our own iron age through to medieval history. In The Last Light of the Sun, the outcast son of a (norse-analogue) raider joins an expedition to find and slay a famous (celt-analogue) Cyngael warrior king, not realising that one of the king's most trusted companions and advisors is actually a notorious raider who was stranded in Cyngael lands years before. Hence, the raid is anticipated, and runs the risk of being disastrously thwarted. That's if I remember it right, it's definitely been a few months since I read this one...

But I do remember thoroughly enjoying both the characterisation and prose - like Joyce, Kay is another master story-teller who never skimps on the quality of his offering - yet coming away with an oddly half-satisfied feeling. I think I somehow managed to get the very strong impression that this was actually the sequel to an earlier book, and I hate reading things out of chronological sequence. I can't work out why I'd think that though, as there's nothing on his website that would fit the bill. Perhaps the detail of his back-story was just so skillfully woven that I just assumed there must have been an earlier novel that I'd somehow missed.

In any case, my own false assumptions aside, it's well worth reading, and as Kay hasn't committed an act of trilogy since his first outing, you can read it in glorious isolation from the rest of his work. Although frankly that's not a situation that's likely to last: once you've sampled and enjoyed one GGK title, you'll definitely want more.

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Okay, that will do for now. I'll talk about the next few another time. And then once I've read enough I'll replace the graphic and talk about the next batch some more.

December 7, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 4 Comments

More Youtube oddness - Tony vs. Paul

Gods above and below! The hours and hours this must have taken...

By the way, the heads-up for this one one came via the Innocent Smoothies weekly e-bulletin...

December 6, 2006 | Filed Under Humour | 2 Comments

New arrivals: Proofs from Solaris

Spent a very pleasant yesterday evening in the company of George Mann and Christian Dunn of Solaris Books, as well as my old mucker Mike Rowley of Waterstone's and author Andy Remic, whose new novel will be published by Solaris in October next year.

Over food, drink and good conversation, George and Christian (whe were not at all distracted by the Christmas party on the next table that seemed to consist of nine or ten young ladies wearing tinsel-trimmed red-satin negligées, fishnet stockings, pointy hats and the occasional bauble) told me about the new Solaris titles scheduled for next year, and gave me a trio of proofs (that's ARCs for any American readers who may have strayed in here) to take away and read. So I've now got the following titles to add to the 'to be read' shelf and peruse at my leisure. Do feel free to click on the cover images to go to Amazon.co.uk and pre-order the ones that take your fancy (sorry Mike, but your lot don't do an affiliate scheme to the best of my knowledge):

The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, edited by George Mann.

This short fiction collection, which will be published in February as one of Solaris' two launch titles, is already getting great press all over the Internet. And so it should, when you take a look at the stellar line-up of (mainly-British) talent included:

Brian Aldiss, Neal Asher, Tony Ballantyne, Keith Brooke, Eric Brown, Paul Di Filippo, Peter F. Hamilton, Simon Ings, Jay Lake & Greg van Eekhout, James Lovegrove, Mike Resnick & David Gerrold, Adam Roberts, Jeffrey Thomas, Mary Turzillo and Ian Watson.

Hell of a line-up, and let's hope this sort of antho becomes an annual feature of the Solaris list.

The Summoner by Gail Martin

The second of the Solaris launch titles, also due in February next year. The Summoner is the first part of an epic fantasy tale of vengeance and necromancy, as prince Martis Drayke is forced into exile when his brother murders their father and seizes the throne. Bereft of living allies and beset by enemies, Martis realizes there is only one place he can turn for support: to the ranks of the dead...

Sounds like my sort of fantasy: dark, sinister, dripping in blood and intrigue. Great cover art as well, which is actually turning into something of a major strong-point for Solaris, judging by the full-size covers in their current catalogue (drop the team a line via their website, I'm sure they'll be happy to send you a copy, and some of them really do have to be seen full-size to be fully appreciated).

[Edit, Dec 7th: As Marc from Solaris pointed out in a comment, you can also download a pdf version of the catalogue from the Solaris website.]

Deadstock by Jeffrey Thomas

Solaris' third release, due in March '07 (along with Dante's Girl by Natasha Rhodes), Deadstock is the fifth novel from American author Thomas, whose previous credits include Letters From Hades, Boneland, Everybody Scream! and the Stoker-nominated Monstrocity, as well as the collection Punktown.

This new novel, an old-school cyberpunk whodunnit by the sound of things, has a great cover-quote from no less a luminary than China Miéville and stars Jeremy Stake, "the private detective with chameleon-like abilities he does not want and cannot control", who is sent to retrieve the living-doll daughter of a wealthy cyberneticist from the pit of depravity into which she has disappeared - Punktown.

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I'm hoping to get the chance to check out all three of those as soon as I get the chance, starting with The Summoner, I reckon. Look for a report at a later date.

December 5, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 3 Comments

Lou Anders' 'Most Significant SF' meme

Via Lou Anders of Pyr Books, writing on his (always worth reading) Bowing to the Future blog, a list-meme based on the Science Fiction Book Club's list of the fifty most significant science fiction / fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.

The Key:

Bold the ones you've read.
Strike-out the ones you hated.
Italicize those you started but never finished.
Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien [*]
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett [*]
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. ~~The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson~~
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams [*]
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson [*]
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip José Farmer

So I've read, what, fourteen of the top 50? Hated one of them - sorry, but Thomas Covenant just pushed all the wrong buttons, although I absolutely loved Donaldson's The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through - and yes, I also loved the (probably predictable) formative teenage-reads: LOTR, HHGTTG, The Colour of Magic... oh, and Snowcrash, which is the novel that switched me on to the idea of SF being about so much more than robots and spaceships... and perhaps that attitude is why I haven't been anywhere near some of the titles on the rest of the list.

And no, I didn't finish The Forever War; don't think I was in the right frame of mind at the time. But I have got a copy of the new Gollancz omnibus edition of Forever War, Forever Free and Forever Peace [Amazon], so at some point I'll sit down and read all three.

Also in my defence, the selection does have rather a US-flavoured slant to it, albeit as you'd expect from the US SF Book Club; and there are a few titles in there that have been out of print in the UK for years, so I can probably claim lack of exposure to quite a few of them (although as an excuse it's a pretty poor one; sf transcending mere geographical boundaries etc. and seeing as we have, like, the Interweb and stuff these days).

And I have read other stuff by Clarke, Moorcock, Dick, Matheson, Bradbury, Asmiov and Gibson. Oh, and I do have a copy of John Crowley's Little, Big [Amazon] on my 'to be read' shelf, in fact it's been there for the past six years (I know, I know, but I'm saving it for a special occasion and besides, the print in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition that I've got is really small...)

And of course it's tricky without knowing the original criteria for assessing their 'significance' (I did find the original list, but there's no mention of the process it's based on), so I'm obviously in danger of straying into the realms of purely subjective opinion, but there are a few titles that I'd argue were ripe for inclusion on the basis of their importance to the UK market, starting with:

Legend, David Gemmell [*]
Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock [*]
Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks

And there would be more if I put my mind to it, I'm sure. But it's Monday morning, I've just spent most of the weekend decorating, and my head is full of paint fumes, dammit...

[edit December 4th-7th] And here they are...

Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks [nominated by Ed Ashby]
Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham [nominated by Joe Gordon]
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Alan Garner
Hyperion, Dan Simmons [nominated by Ed Ashby]
The Malazan Books of the Fallen, Steven Erikson [*]
Drowned World, J.G. Ballard [nominated by Brian Ruckley]
Swords and Deviltry, Fritz Leiber [nominated by Brian Ruckley, seconded and fact-checked by silvereel]

Feel free to make your own nominations in the comments there, folks.

December 4, 2006 | Filed Under Books | 10 Comments

All-England smoking ban confirmed for 01/07/07

I'm so happy.

Okay, I knew I said I was going to steer clear of politics etc. but I was just so completely overjoyed when I read on the BBC website that the government has finally pulled its finger out and named the date that I had to say something.

The pro-smoking lobby in the UK have been making a lot of noise about how the ban will infringe their freedom of choice, how smokers should be allowed to smoke if they want to, that banning them from smoking is just evidence of the nanny-state run wild...

You Know it makes sense, pic by 'msierra' via sxc.hu And I actually agree with the first part. If people want to smoke - to make that adult choice, knowing all the associated health risks, knowing that it heightens their chances of dying early in all sorts of hugely unpleasant ways - then fine, they should be allowed to do that. But in the privacy of their own homes, not in enclosed public spaces where people who have chosen not to smoke cannot possibly avoid inhaling the stuff.

Because that's where the pro-somkers' own argument turns in on itself. How can you have freedom for choice for one group but not another, if their respective choices are diammetrically opposed? In which case, surely at some point you have to draw the line and decide which group to side with: the minority (only about 30% of UK adults are smokers) - whose chosen activity causes proven, physical harm not just to themselves, but to those around them - or the majority, who just want to breathe cleaner air, and enjoy a night out with friends in the pub of their choice without ending up with a rasping throat, a hangover from hell and clothes (and hair, and skin) that smell like the bottom of an ashtray?

An analogy for you: suppose someone really enjoyed the sound of an air-horn being let off right next to their ear? And suppose they decided to sit in a pub for four hours doing just that on a regular basis? Annoying for everyone around them, and eventually it would cause damage to not just their hearing, but that of everyone in ear-shot. Should they, and anyone else who wants to, be allowed to let off air-horns in an enlcosed public place to their heart's content, just because they choose to do so?

So in this particular instance, I applaud the nanny-state for getting it right for once. I just wish the lazy bastards had gotten their act together and introduced the ban a couple of years ago. The very least they could have done is introduce it UK-wide this year, instead of just in Scotland. But still, better late than never, eh?

December 2, 2006 | Filed Under Life | 9 Comments

Mike Rowley's top ten science fiction books of 2006

If you're any kind of science fiction reader it would be well worth your time to check out this particular top ten list; if you only read one top ten list this year, read this one... etc.

'Nova Swing' by M John Harrison But seriously, Mike Rowley is currently the national Science Fiction and Imports buyer (iirc) for Waterstone's Booksellers, which means he's pretty much the most powerful guy in UK science fiction retail right now - Joe Gordon comes in a close second with ever-growing influence through his writing for the Forbidden Planet blog but FP is a much smaller chain - so it's immensely reassuring to see so much high-quality, literary sf in his top ten:

Engaging the Enemy - Vatta's War Bk. 3 by Elizabeth Moon
Polity Agent by Neal Asher
Crossover: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel by Joel Shepherd
Paragaea: A Planetary Romance by Chris Roberson
The Man from the Diogenes Club by Kim Newman
The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction by Gardner Dozois
Nova Swing - Gollancz SF S. by M.John Harrison
Air - by Geoff Ryman
Galactic North - by Alastair Reynolds
Three Days to Never by Tim Powers

Then again, that ought to come as no surprise to anyone who knows Mike. I worked with him for four years at the Manchester Deansgate branch of Waterstone's, and between us (and with brilliant work on the horror section from a guy called Matt Leyshon, who I've sadly lost touch with in the past six or seven years) we managed to put together the best damn sf/f/h section in any major bookstore in the country, bar none.

What's more, he was pretty much single-handedly responsible - apart from earlier contributions from a guy called Huttson Lo who switched me on to both Michael Marshall Smith and Neal Stephenson - for converting me from a Feist, Goodkind, Brooks and co. fat-fantasy nut into the well-rounded, well-read individual I am today (any lapses in the meantime being entirely a case of weakness on my part and no fault of his whatsoever...)

And before working for Waterstone's - which I might add he's done for about twelve years now - Mike studied for the MA in Science Fiction studies at the University of Liverpool, so when I say this guy knows his sf, I mean that he really knows his sf.

Whatever the reputation of his employer for preferring a 'pile-it-high, sell it 3-for-2' mentality in recent years, if there's one guy who will continue to fight for the right of high-quality science fiction (and fantasy, and horror) to take its place on the country's bookshelves, then it's Mike. I just wish he was a regular blogger, I think it would be really good for science fiction if he shared some of those years of know-how and recommended a few more books.

In fact, I'll be sitting down to have dinner with him (courtesy of George Mann and those nice folks at Solaris Books, who have invited both Mike and I along to socialise with Andy Remic, a book by whom they'll be publishing in the not too distant future, or so I believe) so I think I'll mention it to him then and see what he says. Although I expect it'll boil down to his quite sensibly wanting to avoid any possible conflicts of interest with his day job...

(Incidentally, Mike's always been a very private person, so he will probably have hated that he's been made to stand there in that cheesy book-holding pose, which is why in that photo he rather looks like someone has tried to make him eat a shit sandwich... Waterstone's still don't quite get the whole 'blogging as spontaneous, non-manufactured communication' thing, do they..?)

December 1, 2006 | Filed Under Books | Leave a Comment

Preacher series due from HBO?

Good ol' boy Joe Gordon over at the FP Blog has big news via the Hollywood Reporter: HBO are developing a one-hour series based on the Preacher [Amazon] comics by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, about the Texan minister, who becomes possessed by a heaven-born creature so awesomely, terrifyingly powerful that even God does a runner from it.

Colourful dialogue from Preacher, 'Gone to Texas', copyright DC Comics No word as to potential casting just yet, but the HR tells us: "Mark Steven Johnson, the writer-director behind comic adaptations Daredevil and the upcoming Ghost Rider, is writing the pilot, while Howard Deutch is attached to direct."

And apparently both messrs. Ennis and Dillon are attached to the project as executive producers, which means that it might retain at least some semblance of the original spirit of the comics series, which can only be a good thing. And, as Joe G points out, with HBO's track-record there's a good chance that the original spirit of mayhem, violence and seething sexual tension (not to mention the colourfil dialogue) will also be kept intact. Although given Howard Deutch's apparent track record to-date, anything could happen with it...

Still, one to keep an eye on, definitely. And go read the graphic novels in the meantime, you won't regret it.

December 1, 2006 | Filed Under Comics & GNs, TV | 1 Comment