Fairy Tales hiding out in the Modern World

I've read, and enjoyed, the comic book series Fables for quite a while now. Like most of my comcis I read them in trade and I always find myself eagerly anticipating the next book (someday I'll buckle down and buy these I think, they definitely have reread value). For those who haven't read it yet Fables is a Vertigo comic book series created and written by Bill Willingham.The series deals with various characters from fairy tales and folklore who have been forced out of their native lands by a mysterious enemy known as the Adversary (who ends up being someone very clever). They travel to our world and form a clandestine community in New York City known as Fabletown. The main characters are Prince Charming (who becomes mayor), Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, and others. I find it an amusing series and enjoy its take on the characters, especially some of the lesser ones like Little Boy Blue.

Recently I've read the first two books of The Sisters Grimm: Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley and I find the similarities (and differences) interesting. Here we also have a town full of fairy tale entities in New York (upstate this tme not the city), but they are trapped. Prince Charming in the mayor. The Big Bad Wolf works for the main character's grandmother. Snow White teaches elementary school (she's good with little people, see?). This charming ya book is about two sister's whose parents are missing and find out they are the descendents of Wilhlem Grimm, who to save the world from fairy tale entities grown bitter and angry (or maybe to save the fairy tale creatures) had Bab Yaga cast a spell to trap them all in Ferryport New York. Like I said its cute and an easy read. A little too old for the boy perhaps, which is why I had originally got them (he likes detectives, everyone in the family likes fairytales).

I always find it interesting to read stuff where the authors are definitely dipping into the same well but drawing different stuff out.

Pirates, Weird and Otherwise

So I'm thinking about pirates, in partiular weird pirates. Here's what I have so far on my must read list.

• William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night: This book is a culmination of Burroughs's mythology of freedom through fantasy encompassing the entire earth, all of its peoples, both sexes, and all of human history. A retroactive utopia founded by eighteenth-century pirates is the basis for Burroughs's social criticism. A story about the dystopian cities of the red night focuses on the theme of the biological trap. And the writer's quest is conveyed through a contemporary detective story in which a private investigator uncovers the biological trap and finds he must rewrite history to escape it.


• Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides:A pirate story with a Powers twist. This book is an excellent example of Powers' integration of supernatural elements into a well-described historical setting peopled with real characters from history.


• William Hope Hodgson, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, the Ghost Pirates: William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918) spent nine years as a merchant seaman. Not all of his sea stories are supernatural but all atmospherically evoke both the remoteness of a ship at sea and the strangeness of what lies beneath the waves. Some good short stories include "The Voice in the Night" where castaways are overcome by a fungus; and "The Derelict" where an ancient ship mutates into a living organism. The Boats of the Glen Carrig is deadpan nautical horror which slowly turns ever more surreal and disturbing. If this can capture, at times, the atmosphere of dread in these books than it can be considered a success. This book is currently (together with Hodgson’s other books) fueling much of the thought about the Excrucians in the game. In The Ghost Pirates -- probably his most successful example of sustained horror -- a fated ship becomes haunted by an infradimensional craft.


• Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood: Captain Blood begins with Blood's settled domestic life and ending along with his career as a pirate. Along the way we learn how oppression drives men to desperate actions, how fate plays a hand in everyone's life and that love is possibly the greatest power of all. The book, in short, wants for nothing. Its pages abound with adventure, color, romance and even strong social commentary on the evils of slavery and the danger of intolerance. Not weird but definitely a classic pirate book that underpines a lot of the other stuff on this list.


• The Spiral Series by Michael Scott Rohan: This series is comprised by Chase the Morning, Gates of Noon, Cloud Castles, and Maxie’s Demon. Sea adventure, Voodoo, and strange things out of time figure in this series of books. A fun and at times crazy series.

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In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps—with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.

Rather fluffy piece on Slate which at least states a basic truth about the inanity of the whole stem cell debate. Its not really about embryos. Or if it i only because people who are against stem cell research are being rather inconsistent.

Not that saying the simple truth ever gets through to conservative true-believers. Or any other sort of true-believer unfortunately.