Most grateful to Counting Cats for this.
As a lifelong SF fan I know my limits; comic books (the true cognoscenti disdain the modern pseudoeuphemism ‘graphic novels’) are a very specialised field in which I have never really dabbled. Besides, I don’t much care for ‘em, particularly not the American ’superhero’ stuff, because Nietzsche arranged Hollywood becomes tedious after the first few dozen repetitions.
My favourite comic-book artist is Phillipe Druillet (le site officiel / Wikipedia). I’m hip; I get my kicks watching arty French flicks with my shades on.
So I can’t really presume to criticise Smith and Beiser’s The probability broach as a ‘graphic novel’, except to say that the artist, though very competent, isn’t quite the same as Druillet.
However, as an exercise in alternate reality it is not half bad, and the alternate reality portrayed is one most satisfactory to a libertarian.
It kept me off the streets last night, anyway. It’s not often that I force myself to stay on the computer for so long, but I have read all 185 pages of it, and would be interested to see the author’s next work.
Counting Cats also provides this link to the Baen Free Library, which appears to be a rather promising publishing scheme based upon principles somewhat more libertarian than those of the copyright-vampires so common in the USA, against whose preferences in this respect it may be some form of reaction.
In exchange for this useful and culturally refreshing stuff I regret that at present I can offer the counter of cats only the number 2, being the number of cats who live at the Villa Underclass (Safe Cat and Dangerous Cat).
L Neil Smith did whole series of these libertarian alternative histories. I really do recommend them in paperback form, though if you’re not aware of them [who knows]? the works of F.Paul Wilson , and especially the LaNague Federation are a little more adult in tone.
I know I tend to read Jerry Pournelle, CS Lewis and SM Stirling these days, but both the first writers are still top-drawer libertarian reads.
Thanks. I have been rummaging Wikipedia and will look more stuff up.
I read the book years and years ago, but I found this sits only a couple of years ago, when it was still being published only a couple of pages a week. Despite knowing how the story ends I kept going back week after week for nearly a year to read it in dribs and drabs.
Most frustrating.
BTW, that is the third time I have posted about it. If this was the first time for you then you simply don’t drop by often enough.
Are those cats in Zanzibar?
Strange; I’ve got you on the RSS thing, so I should have seen it. Chronic inattention, perhaps.
The cats are not presently in Zanzibar, but I am sure that it could be arranged. Perhaps one could have one of those exchange schemes, like students.
Exchange-cats! (love it)
I can’t have cats these days, sadly, although I like them. Always had at least one cat when I was younger.
But they would decimate our quite large frog population as the neighbour’s aggressocats in Ewell, Surrey, did for his frogs, and I don’t mind frogs for they eat most of our slugs and snails which is fine by us: and also my wife likes to sit and watch them prancing about like Grampuses (the frogs not the slugs) which is a rare thing for an animal to get as an honour, er, in our garden here.
I even do try to shoot the odd heron which tries to predate them. Never got any, being useless these days as I can’t see down the telescopic sight-thingy properly any more. So I still don’t know what grilled heron tastes like.
Pray don’t forget Mr S Clay Wilson:
http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/comics-as-art/
And, Signor Serpieri is, anyway, a whole lot less impenetrable than the tediously artistic and insightful Druillet:
http://www.druuna.net/
Probably tastes of chicken. Everything else does.. :)
Emmett, thanks for the links. The first one is to do with YouTube, which I can’t receive owing to the side-effects of an anti-BBC direct action. The second one suggests that though Druillet doubtless has his disadvantages, he does enjoy the advantage of having had more than one idea.
‘Be that as it may….’
(English English for: you’ve got me!)