Well, I found my comics Holy Grail, at the 2017 Toronto Comics Arts Festival, where I met the creator and was able to purchase a then-brand-new complete collection of the comic. It was a funny-animal comic, influenced by classic comic strips and really classic — like, pre-Warner Brothers — cartoons. A comic by a Canadian creator. A comic that was… a musical comedy?!
Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men: No Plans for the Future by Sara Martin is an academic study of several male authors and their relatively recent work. The book, in their own words: “Exploring a broad selection of writers and works, the fourteen chapters present a panoramic overview of men’s contributions to current SF and explore their slow but noticeable progress in the representation of gender. The impact of feminism and gender studies, and the demands of readers, have profoundly transformed men’s SF, which now presents far more caring and vulnerable male characters. The old stereotypes are being replaced by a collective reflection on how men and masculinity are changing, though the lack of a common agenda results in novels that, while exciting and often challenging, sometimes miss the chance to imagine a better, anti-patriarchal, pro-feminist future for men and for all human beings…”
Ultimately I’m hard pressed to write about the individual stories of the collection because they are all so good, but often in very varied ways, and the best thing that I can say is to simply go and discover them all.
It’s an entertaining heist story that can be raced through in a few hours (288 pages), but it also has some deeper themes to consider.
In Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present, co-authors Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook take a scholarly but very readable look at British folklore. They convincingly treat folklore as an evolving presence in culture, not just the remnants of a vanished past (and they point out that even a lot of allegedly ancient customs are actually relatively modern). I’m no expert in the subject, but the authors’ broad grasp of the subject and reasoning about its various aspects seem quite sound. I found the book very interesting and often extremely entertaining.
Combining strong world building with thorough character development, a solid plot, and diverse themes, the story has that full course meal kind of feel.
