Mortals, Meet the Dark and Twisty: A Review of Goblin Fruit, Part III
Hallo again, Ye Faithful Paladins of the Black Gate!
So nice to hobnob with you here, with every mother’s child of you looking so ruddy and so spry. Ah. I notice that since last we met you’ve invested in cold iron and a few sprigs of rowanberries. Protective charms. Hedge-witchery. Well done! I mean, it probably won’t protect you from the wrath of the mighty Goblin Hordes in the long run, but nice try anyway! You’re learning.
So, look. In Part I and Part II of this here saga, I introduced y’all to the myth, mischief and magic that is Goblin Fruit Magazine. In my final homage to the Goblin Queens, editrices Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica P. Wick, I feel it worth mentioning their literary endeavors independent of Goblin Fruit, both prose and poetry, which may be found in such places as Strange Horizons (Amal’s “And Their Lips Rang with the Sun, for example, and Jess’s “How Wizards Duel”), Mythic Delirium, and Cabinet des Fées.
That’s just the beginning of their genre-spanning conquest, of course, but this is the 21st Century. Our friend “Google” will take you the rest of the way.
If you don’t understand the headline, you’re probably too young to remember Max Headroom, originally a British television movie that became a short-lived series for American broadcast (1987-1988) featuring a computer generated talking head–that would be Max–who later became a music video host, a “spokesperson” for New Coke (and if you don’t know what New Coke was, you’re really too young to care about this), and later brought out of retirement in the United Kingdom to explain the switch from analog to digital TV (this, you might remember). Though, today, any 12 year old with a cheap laptop could probably program a character like Max, back in the 1980s this was beyond the technical reach and budget constraints of broadcast television; Max was played by Canadian actor Matt Frewer outfitted in a latex get-up to make him appear pixalated.
“For the love of God, not another one!”
Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)
Predicting the weather is an art and a science… yes, really, it’s a science, believe me. I spent four years at Penn State University learning chemistry, calculus, physics, thermodynamics, and fluid dynamics to earn my Meteorology Degree – I should know.
One of the characteristics of a great book is that you can go back to it at different times in your life and get different things out of it. But then sometimes the reverse happens: you read a book before you’re ready. If you’re lucky, though, the book hangs around in the back of your mind, and eventually you pick it up again and find out what you weren’t able to grasp the first time around.