Pornokitsch

New York, New York.

Is there any city that has featured in as many stories, songs and films? Ok, maybe Paris, but ignoring that - definitely New York. The representations of New York are as varied as its famously melting-pot population, but there are threads and themes that connect them.

Will Eisner’s New York; Life In The Big City is a classic collection of vignettes and short pieces about New York, published between 1981 and 2000. It is perhaps the most famous graphic text dealing with the city itself. It collects four of Eisner's works: 'The Building’, ‘City People’, ‘Notebook’ and ‘Invisible People’ - all drawing on Eisner’s lifetime of observing the people of New York and the changes it has undergone over the years.

Problem Glyph by Eliza Gauger

Writering

I cannot stand writing about writing ( 'writering', naturally). Meg Furey agrees:

Melville’s Moby-Dick contains hundreds of dull-ass, dryly written pages on ship parts, whale books and the minutiae of whaling. When I come upon an essay about a writer writing about writing on Medium, I abandon ship faster than I should have Moby-Dick. Why? Because there are other writers to read. Writing is a matter of doing and I’d rather read the writers who explore things we cannot see, who endeavor to find something new, who chase the fucking whale and live to write about it.

Lest it sound like pure nastiness - it isn't! She also sneaks in some real advice - stealthily done, but very handy.

After years of chewing over it and thousands of words of inconclusive blog posts, I still have very little idea where the division is between 'YA' fantasy and 'epic' fantasy (interesting -  heated - discussion on this very point over at r/fantasy).

I mean, physically, it is generally around 15-20 feet - depending on the size of the bookstore. But as overarching, sub-genre distinctive themes? I got nothing. 

Marie Lu's The Young Elites (2014) further muddies these opaque waters. The Young Elites is also a unique sort of muddle, as it contains both very-much-YA and very-much-epic-fantasy tropes within the same book. Rather than blurring the two together, it happily plucks from both extremes.

Adelina is a malfetto, one of the scarred survivors of a great plague that swept through the land. Although generally despised as 'cursed', some malfettos also exhibit magical powers - these are called 'Young Elites'. (Why one term is cod-Italian and the other cod-Ralph-Lauren-catalogue, I have no idea.) These Young Elites are sought after by both the Inquisition (who wish to kill them) and the Dagger Society (who wish to recruit them). Adelina, as you might expect, turns out to be a rather powerful Young Elite - one that's greatly desired, in every sense, by both sides. 

When Breaking the Glass Slipper was asked to identify some of the issues facing female writers in genre, the very first thing that each of us replied was ‘discoverability’.

Why is it that, with the exception of long-established authors, books by women do not seem to be as widely publicised as those authored by men? Our first episode considers ‘best of’ lists, which certainly play a part in discoverability. They also remain the clearest example of inequality. Why, we wondered, do these lists not feature more than the token woman? What material are the makers of such lists drawing from? Where exactly is the problem?

Well, admitting that there is a problem for starters.

Ignorance is as bad as outright sexism when it comes to the struggle facing female writers. Discoverability is a huge issue. Our sales and therefore careers depend on our ability to reach as many readers as possible. When a great swathe of the population is closed off to us, it isn’t only our finances that suffer; it’s genre fiction too. Female voices are desperately needed if SFF is both to flourish and to retain its longstanding distinction as the genre that challenges the status quo.

Three fantasy titles of all shapes and sizes - Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Falcons of Narabedla, Greg James' Under A Colder Sun and Alex Marshall's A Crown for Cold Silver. 

Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Falcons of Narabedla (1957)

Mike does radio things in a Government Lab. Electricity happens, and, ker-wham, he's mind-ported to Narabedla, Last of the Rainbow Cities. Mike's consciousness rests in the body of Adric, one of Naradebla's arrogant ruling class. Adric's mind isn't totally gone, but sort of repressed, helping Mike/Adric get dressed and occasionally resurfacing in a plot-pushing kind of way.

M'Adric is thrown in at the deep end. Fortunately, there are a lot of people around who are happy to elaborate on Narabedla's history, culture and current events. M'Adric learns that the rulers of Narabedla all have a captive Dreamer under their thrall - a powerful, wish-granting psychic - more djinn than mortal. Adric, in his pre-Mike days, seems to have done something naughty and loosed one of the Dreamers. Now the entire system is under threat. Will there be a revolution? Should there be a revolution? Plots within plots, betrayals within betrayals - including Mike and Adric scheming against one another. From within the same body!

"Aunt Emmy", first aired November 15, 1955, from the series The Clock.

Thoughts Before Listening

It has sometimes been my wont to believe like the dickens that something is going to be good simply because I think the title is rad. This rarely works out because why would it. I have chosen to listen to Aunt Emmy for exactly this reason. I am stupid.

Delighted to announce that Irregularity is part of this month's 'Nerd History' Storybundle, sitting alongside some rather fascinating works of computing non-fiction.*

Storybundles are fun. You pay what you want. The books are DRM free. You get a ton of reading. And a big ol' cut goes to an awesome charity - in this case, the Computer History Museum. For those counting down the days until Jurassic goes extinct, it is also a nice way to pick up Irregularity before it disappears into the ether. (Or aether, take your pick.)

Irregularity contains over a dozen stories of the Age of Reason - featuring the ambitious men and women who tried to categorise and organise the world. And all the things that defied such organisation...

It contains stories by E.J. Swift**, Kim Curran***, Claire North, Nick Harkaway, Simon Guerrier, Rose Biggin, James Smythe, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Richard de Nooy, Roger Luckhurst, M. Suddain, Archie Black, Tiffani Angus and Adam Roberts.**** Plus some gorgeously irregular art from Gary Northfield, and an afterword from our partners at the National Maritime Museum. 

Tis a pretty good book, if I say so myself. And now's a chance to get it with six of its friends!

----

*Disclaimer: As compelling as time-travelling Bryan May and mechanical dinosaurs might be, Irregularity is not actually non-fiction. Unless you want it to be, in which case, go for it.

**This one was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize.

***This one got Tiptree Honors.

****This one was described as 'the most Adam Roberts thing that Adam Roberts has ever Adam Robertsed'. Which is pretty accurate.

As calculated by Anne and the One Comic crew (Jon, Bex, Jared).

As with all lists on the internet, this is final and absolute.

Full disclosure: I've already seen Civil War (twice!), and it's great.

But if you haven't and you want to head to the cinema wearing something that proclaims your Cap vs. Iron Man loyalties, or if you just want to look at some cool Civil War-inspired stuff... well, that's what we're here for. 

Let's start with the iconic Cap vs. Iron Man image from the comics, above.