I Sing the Body Electric, featuring Mick Ronson.

This Corgi paperback has the distinction of being voted as one of the worst SF covers ever. Not only does the artwork have nothing to do with book (an anthology of short stories by Ray Bradbury and one of my favorites way back when — I saved my hard-earned allowance money to buy it) it is so. Damn. Weird. A bodybuilding centaur with clones of himself attached at the end of his arms in lieu of hands? That is nightmare territory.

Not only that, but the artist seems to have modeled the creature’s face on a rock star popular at the time…

That’s Mick Ronson on the left, David Bowie’s guitarist and musical collaborator in his Ziggy Stardust days, and later a minor star in his own right. Further proving the close connections between SF and rock n’ roll. Hey, I thought centaur-man looked familiar!

 

Worldbuilding Wednesday 6/4/25: Unusual Magic Books, Part 2

A few more for the adventurers’ library.

 

More Unusual Magic Books

Arven’s Guide to Quick Calculation: Written for merchants, bankers, traders, and anyone else working with cash. Reading this magic book once will allow the character to forever eschew the use of an abacus or other calculating instrument, for they can now do simple math in their head with 95% accuracy.

The Book of Fowl and Fish: Contains dozens of spells relating to both birds and piscine creatures. The spells are of all levels; some are useless, others very powerful. The cover is made of hammered silver inlaid with a beautiful peacock and a goldfish in a yin-yang design. The owner of this precious book gains both flying and swimming abilities.

The Book of Light: This large, ornate clerical tome has one purpose only. As soon as the clasps are unfastened and the cover opened, pure white light floods the area, driving out evil creatures, withering undead, and restoring adventurers’ shattered bodies and psyches.

The Brown Almanac: Published once a year for those in the gladiatorial entertainment industry, it contains fighting tips and techniques. Any issue is prized by fighters of this class. Reading just one issue grants them a 10% greater chance of victory for the next month. Gladiatorial schools will have issues dating back decades.

Hesti’s Catalog of Singular Flutes:  Contains a list of unique magic flutes with a picture and a detailed description of each. Of interest to mage-historians mostly, but any magic users reading it can gain enough knowledge to craft their own simple magic flute.

A Magus’s Guide to Eliminating Debt:  On first glance this looks like a self-help book about personal finances, but it also contains spells expressedly designed for saving money. Any magic user haunted by creditors who reads this will see their personal fortune double or even triple over the next six months. The book can only be used once per character.

Manuel of Torment: Anyone who reads this book will experience all the physical pain of being tortured without being damaged physically. Moreover, they are cursed to keep reading it until all chapters are finished while in such distress. The good thing is, they are 90% less likely to buckle under torture in some future situation.

Notebook of Protection: This looks like a small, plain ledger bound in buckskin filled with blank, unlined pages. The magic is the owner is granted protection against whatever they write on one of those pages, limited to no more than three words: e.g. “all breath weapons” “vampires, ghosts, lichs” “lawful good beings.” This makes it a powerful item indeed. Only one page can be written on at a time, and that protection lasts for 24 hours; after that, the page rips itself out and vanishes. Most of the time these books are found with a limited number of pages. A new book usually has 20. Anyone can use this item, not just mages.

Scarlet’s Handbook of Minstrelry: For bards, minstrels, and troubadours of all kinds. It tells performers how to analyze their audience, how to improve their singing technique (with vocal exercises), and suggests songs for different races and locales. In addition it includes costuming and performing tips. At the end are several low level spells suitable for bards with magical talent. Any minstrel reading the book through is likely to be 25% more successful in their profession over the next six months. The book only works once per character.

The Tome of Greaves and Gauntlets: For blacksmiths and armorers. Contains instructions and tips for making arm and leg protection, including basic magic armor (+1, protection from fire, etc.) The crafter must study it for three weeks and also list the help of a mage for the magical types.

Passing Obsessions 5-25

Deli Don, art by Barbara Matthews

Fluffy Summer supplement insert for The Chicago Times contains a list of books generated by ChatGPT, and only two of them are real! Among them, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s (writer of Daisy Jones and the Six) fake novel The Collector’s Piece, about “a reclusive art collector and the journalist determined to uncover the truth behind his most controversial acquisition.” Sounds like something I’d like to read…

Daybreak Star Radio, run out of Seattle,Washington, all indigenous music, all the time!

What is Hiraeth? (I was going to post this link for Tolkien March but forgot. Hey, it also works for Narnia Summer.)

Creative portraits of Donald Trump, curated by Michael Moore.

 

A Court of Tiddies and Ass

So I was reading A Court of Tiddies and Ass, and I absolutely hated every dreadful second of it. Should I read the follow-up, A Court of Dongs and Thongs? To be clear, I just hated the first book on every level; the characters, the story, the prose, even the font on the cover of the book made me shit blood in rage. I personally egged the author’s home because I hated her book so much, it cost me like 200$ but I was too passionate about it. Please convince me to keep reading it even though it’s very obvious I just don’t like it at all. I’m miserable but I can’t handle the FOMO of not reading a popular series. Thanks!!!

Not mine though I wish it was. Found on Reddit in the romantasycirclejerk board. If you don’t get it, the writer is making fun of the typical “Does this book get any better?” posting found on fantasyromance.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/28/2025: Let’s Talk About Batman Villains (Harley Quinn)

Punchline, the latest of the Joker’s “girlfriends”

The more I got into last week’s Worldbuilding Wednesday post the more I realized how convoluted the history of Harley Quinn really is. For one thing, she wasn’t the Joker’s first female sidekick. That honor belongs to Duela Dent, who originated in 1976. She claimed to be the Joker’s daughter and wanted to join the Teen Titans to make amends.  The would-be crime fighter, however, also turned out to be a pathological liar, claiming at times to be the offspring of ALL the major Batman villains with different names and identities to match. Finally Robin  sussed out the truth and discovered her true heritage: she was Two-Face’s daughter. Which makes sense, given her first name (Dual-a, get it?) and problems of identity.

Despite this, she kept a spiritual connection to The Joker. On finally joining the Titans she became known as the jovial but deadly Harlequin, a test run for the future Harley Quinn. She went through many other changes over the years, from criminal to do-gooder, sane to insane, and as time went on she became less of a character in her own right and more of a coat hanger for the writers to hang outrageous metaverse plots on (she existed on three different Earths, for example, with different, often grisly, backstories) before vanishing altogether in 2007. It was the waste of a good concept.

Harley Quinn eventually realized the error of her ways and became a force for good, leaving the Joker adrift. But The Joker wasn’t lonely for long. A young bank teller, Marian Drewes, became the second Harley Quinn  after he took her hostage during a bank robbery (Joker being so insane at the time he thought she was the real thing.)  Unlike the original Harley Quinn, she, now calling herself Neo Joker, eventually married him. Since all this happened in a limited edition DC series, who knows if it’s part of the main continuity or not.

And there was yet a third lover/sidekick for the Joker, this time a college student named Alexis Kaye, whom Joker also took hostage during his takeover of a TV station her class was visiting as part of a field trip. Like her forbears, she became obsessed with her captor, starting a podcast about him and running about in a homemade costume and poisoning homeless people to gain his attention. The evil antics certainly did: taking the name of Punchline, she became his main underboss. As a villain she was the inverse of Harley Quinn rather than her imitator: cool and quiet instead of histrionic and flashy, more cruel and less fun.

(Side comment from me: I’m getting of Batman comics being so bloody. They’re superheroes, not Clive Barker characters!)

All that put me in a mind to come up with some future Joker girlfriends, with pun-filled names of course.

 

Some Future Harley Quinns

Caricature  Carrie Cacciaratti. An Italian-American woman trying to make it in the competitive field of stand-u comedy.
Carnival Valerie Carney. A small-time grifter and hustler, and a more ebullient and colorful sidekick than Punchline. I can see her throwing knives and lobbing spinning lottery wheels at people like frisbees.
Chuckles, Giggles, and Snickers A trio of ladies all equally enamored.
Hilarity Hilary Ross. Hilary-ous, get it?
Irony Irene Ni. A Japanese girl equally infatuated with Joker and anime. Her humor is on the arch side.
Jester
 Her first name would be Jessie, of course.
Lampoon A former writer for a comedy show who was fired for not being funny enough, and now she’s out for revenge! She’d be a younger version of Tina Fey.
Laughtrack This would fit the character above too.
Ludicrous Lydia Cross.
Meme Miriam “Mimi” Parker. A good content creator gone bad.
Mischief Melissa Cheever. I can’t see her staying evil for very long.
Repartee Stacy Witt. Her sense of humor is more dry and intellectual.
Screwball Harley Quinn 3.0. I can see her sticking around for a while.
Sidesplitter Truly a deadly clown prone to completely mangling her targets.
Zinger If the Joker had a 12-year-old daughter who followed him she’d take on this identity.

 

Prehistoric Planet, Seasons 1 and 2 [Review]

Two dinosaurs share a tender moment in Prehistoric Planet

If you like dinosaurs, or any other type of monster, Prehistoric Planet is the series for you. Airing on Apple+ in the U.S. but made in Great Britain, by the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, it utilizes the latest and greatest CGI technology to bring these creatures back to life. It also employs the most up-to-date scientific research on dinosaurs available at the time it was made ( early 2020s) so a more realistic picture is presented than the mindlessly roaring behemoths of the Jurassic Park movie franchise.

The series is narrated by an elderly David Attenborough as if the creatures were still alive or the film crew had traveled back in time. In line with most Attenborough documentaries, feeding, mating, and parental behaviors are emphasized — you will hear him say “youngster” umpteen times when referring to the dino hatchlings, who are all insanely cute. (This doesn’t prevent them from being picked off by predators, however.) In sum, the dinos are treated like wildebeest, ground squirrels, or cuttlefish would be, just ordinary animals living their lives.

The CGI was near-flawless. The exception was the animation of the sauropods, but then it would be difficult for anyone to get such titanic, otherworldly creatures look real. The smaller, nimbler dinosaurs fared better.  Their movements were a cross between bird and mammal, with emotions depicted in subtle ways like the turn of a head or a gesture with a tail. The CGI was even more amazing in that many of the dinosaurs were feathered as with current scientific consensus, each strand moving as neatly and logically as a bird’s plumage would. For the dinosaurs that were not feathered, the scale modeling and coloration was up to snuff as well, considering many had patterns mimicking snakeskin or even tropical fish. The sound design was also very good, the roars and grunts being subtle and unique to each species, and some of the dinos even gave birdlike trills.

The recreation was so wonderful my little Xolo dog was convinced they were real. She barked during the fighting-for-mate scenes, whined when the babies hatched, and growled when the dinosaurs were stalking their prey, working herself into such a frenzy she stood, forepaws on the footboard of the bed with her nose pointed at the screen, bouncing and trembling and nearly falling off the bed in her vigor. She even jumped down a few times to look behind the bureau where she was sure the dinosaurs were hiding. It took a good 30 minutes for her to calm down afterward.

There were five episodes in each season. Each one concentrated on a different biome and three or four different dinosaurs that lived there. Both seasons concentrated on the late Cretaceous period, so no Stegosaurs or Giganotosaurs were lurking about. Thankfully no meteor arrived to spoil the fun.

My favorite parts were a Tyrannosaur swimming with its babies like a mama duck with ducklings, traveling to an offshore island where a carcass has washed up to scavenge. It kicked off the season well, because you don’t expect Tyrannosaurs to swim, do you! I also liked the bits with Azhdarchids, huge pterosaurs that make cameo appearances over the course  of both seasons. These were truly amazing creatures for which no analog exists today. They had huge, albeit hollow, beaked heads, elaborate crests, and tiny bodies; they walked on their front knuckles like gorillas with their wing membranes folded backwards. I also liked the episodes on sea life, one in each season; season two introduced the Mosasaur, the most deadly aquatic predator of the Cretaceous, not a dinosaur but a lizard ancestor grown to huge size with flippers who has kept its forked tongue with which it uses to taste the water.

But my favorite one of all was the mating habits of Carnotaurus, an odd-looking carnivore from South America that had two horns on its head and laughably tiny arms even smaller than a T-rex’s. Why didn’t it lose these arms, which lacked the bones and muscle to even move the fingers, you ask? Because male Carnotauruses used them in mating rituals, dancing and waving those tiny appendages — which have a metallic blue color on the inside, visible only when being rotated and nodded about — to attract a Carnotaurus female. It’s the most ridiculous mating dance ever, and it’s great.

I can hope more seasons of the series are greenlit for the future.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 5/21/2025: Let’s Talk About Batman Villains

Harley Quinn’s costume design was based on the Joker character in a typical pack of playing cards.

In this post I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while: analyze Batman villain names.

Batman has been all over the place for the past three decades, and plenty of folks have seen the shows, the movies, the parodies, the comics  (which comprise only a small part of the franchise now), the video games, the Legos, the fashion dolls. The mythology has grown exponentially. Yet the the major villains’ names (that is, their given-at-birth names) remain the same, and 99% of the time there’s some pun involved relating to their criminal identity. That is what I’m going to examine here.

Take Harley Quinn. Introduced in 1992 in Batman: The Animated Series, she has proven so popular it now seems she’s been in the Batman world from the beginning. Her bold, curvacious design and murderous smile, combined with a whimsical confusion — as if continually stoned on nitrous oxide — make her into a manic pixie dream girl taken to the extreme. Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, Ph.D, was a psychologist treating the Joker while he was in Arkham Asylum and was gradually warped into becoming as criminally insane as he was; from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to becoming Harley Quinn, his girlfriend and sidekick. But, in a reflection of the relationship between  Krazy Kat and Ignatz the mouse, the Joker spurns her devotion, causing her to become even more insane. She’s the ex-girlfriend from Hell, another trope popularized in the 1990s. And, like put-upon Tom of Tom & Jerry fame (for what is Tom and Jerry but a replay of Krazy and Ignatz?)  she wields a giant, cartoonish mallet as a weapon.

The creation of Harley also began a theme of the Batman villains interacting amongst themselves and creating storylines with nary a good guy to be seen. For example, there’s one of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy being lesbian lovers, and others where Harley renounces criminality and becomes a force for good (sort of) teaming up with Batgirl. Anything for a buck!

One of the things I don’t like about Harley Quinn, however, is her birth name: Harleen Frances Quinzel. That is way too obvious. Why couldn’t she have been named, oh, I don’t know, Susan or something? That sounds more natural while giving a hint of her future identity. AFAIK, no one’s named Harleen, even in the deep South. Charleen, maybe. And Quinzel, what the heck kind of surname is that?

It’s a common problem the Batman villains suffer from, names and backstories that are way too matchy-matchy and stretch one’s sense of belief. It cheapens them for me. It might have been well and good up to the 1960s, when Batman was still for kids, but the franchise has matured since then, become more adult. Batman’s world shouldn’t still be so punny, in other words.

 

Batman villain names, analyzed and critiqued

Alice in Wonderland Villains Over the years there’s been many Alice in Wonderland themed villains who often formed a themed gang. The first of them was The Mad Hatter, real name Jervis Tetch, who made his debut appearance in 1948. That name was an old-fashioned, Dickensian one that fit him perfectly back then, as the Victorian Age wasn’t long past. Criminals born in that era, and the decade past it, would still be living.

But the problem here was with his gang, whose names matched all too well the criminal identities they chose.  For example, two underlings named Tweedledee and Tweedledum had the birth names of Dumphrey and Deever Tweed, which is less than subtle.
Black and White
Bandit		 Roscoe Chiara. Chiararosco, get it? It’s hard to believe this villain dates from 2001 when writers should have known better. Roscoe was an artist who went colorblind by using an untested paint pigment, leading him to a crime rampage born of revenge. This is what I mean by being too matchy-matchy!
Calendar Man Julian Gregory Day. Get it? Calendar Man was one of the minor, very silly villains that populated Batman’s early comic days. In the Lego Batman movie, he’s little better than a pest for this very reason. But, this is a case where the matching name and identity makes sense. Dimbulb Julian Gregory Day decides to be a master criminal, but needs a catchy moniker. “What shall I call myself? Oh, Calender Man, it’s so obvious!”

In the DC comic world Calendar Man has been re-imagined several times as a more serious, disturbed criminal. But his name remains the same.
Catwoman Selina Kyle. Not bad. Selina implies night; Selina was an ancient Greek goddess of the moon, and of course cats go about by night. It’s also very feminine sounding and Catwoman is uber femme.
Clock King William Tockman. See Calendar Man.

As punishment for having such a punny name, Clock King was made fun of for many years in the DC universe, such as appearing in a villain team known as the Injustice League which was periodically trounced by the Teen Titans. He’s received several re-imaginings in recent decades that have turned him into a more sinister character and a name change from WIlliam to Billy, but the Tockman has persisted.
Great White Shark Warren White. It’s a pun, but makes sense. His backstory is he was a crooked investor who got sent to Arkham Asylum, and during a prison riot he got locked in Mr. Freeze’s cell where he lost a great deal of his face due to frostbite. Now lacking lips, he filed his teeth to points and named himself after the shark of Jaws fame. This origin story holds water (sorry for another pun) to me of how a run of bad luck leads to a minor villain’s reinvention into something major. He could have become the White Ghost, or the White Whale, but his former occupation pushed him firmly toward Shark.
KG Beast Anatoly Knyazev. He’s an ex-KGB assassin so his name, though it contains a pun, makes sense, something a native Russian speaker would make up on the fly.
Kite Man Charles Brown. Also known as Chuck. A rare cross-comic meta reference to the Peanuts character who battled with a kite-eating tree every summer. Kite Man appeared in 1960 when the Peanuts cartoon strip began to become popular. He was considered a joke by DC artists and writers for many years, even to the extant of uttering “Rats!” whenever a plot of his was foiled. He’s still around though, going through many incarnations over the years, whereas the original Charley Brown is not (Charles Schultz died in 2000 and the Peanuts strip was discontinued. The old ones are still syndicated.)
Mr. Freeze Victor Fries. Fries is a perfectly good German name, but going from Fries to Freeze, plus considering his pre-villain job as a cryogenics expert, makes this one too matched. How he must have been teased about his name matching his profession while in grad school!
Penguin Oswald Cobblepot. OK, penguins are funny in how they waddle back and forth, and “cobblepot” certainly describes their walk in an onomatopoeic way. But the Penguin is a dangerous criminal with mob affiliations, and IMO he shouldn’t be mocked with having such a silly-sounding surname. Penguin likes gambling, tailored suits, fast women, shmoozing, fine whiskey. Give him a last name with classy, British feel, like Chesterfield or Derbyshire. That he founded the Iceburg Club before he “came out” as the Penguin could be why he decided on that moniker.

For the record, I also disliked Tim Burton’s Penguin re-imagining as a pathetic carnival freak with fused fingers. It just doesn’t fit the character.
Poison Ivy Pamela Lillian Isley. Too obvious. Why couldn’t her first name have been something else?
Riddler Edward Nygma. Riddler is another of the main group of villains, appearing multiple times in media over the years. Like Joker, he is more insanely evil than criminally evil. His green costume covered with black question marks, paired with a derby hat, cravat, and walking cane, is iconic. But giving him the name of E. Nygma just overdoes it.
Scarecrow Jonathan Crane. It matches, but it’s subtle. Crane harks back to Ichabod Crane, the colonial schoolteacher who was scared out of his wits by the Headless Horseman, and Jonathan is a nice old-fashioned touch.
Two-Face Harvey Dent. I like this one. It’s perfect. Implies he’s been an accident, which he was — his face was deformed — dented — by some acid a disgruntled client threw at him. The word dent also calls up images of fender-benders where the victim hires a crooked lawyer to sue the other vehicle owner for an outrageous sum.

I know there’s many more villains than these; I just chose the obvious ones.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Turns 50: Some Reflections

The cast singing the “Knights of the Round Table” song

Wow, I feel old! Fifty years has passed since this cheeky film was released in 1975.

It’s hard to explain, now, the effect this movie had on late Baby Boomer and Gen X geeks. It wasn’t apparent at the time of its release, which I remember was quick and quiet and certainly didn’t stick around the theaters all summer like Steven Spielberg’s Jaws did. It accrued over time. In the U.S., it was periodically broadcast on public TV as a fundraiser, broken up by donation pleas; this is where I first saw it. It was during  the knights who say ‘nih’  sketch or the three-headed giant one. Either way, I tolerated those pledge breaks for the rest of it. I already knew PBS showed Monty Python episodes late at night on weekends, and there was also a movie of their best skits re-created for film. But an original film was a different beast. It clicked perfectly into place with the irreverancy of the 1970s and growing SFF and gaming fandoms, particularly Dungeons & Dragons whose settings, at the time, were exclusively English Medieval. Oh, and the growing popularity of Ren Faires throughout the 1980s and 90s, not to mention the nascent phenomena of comicons.

You can think of it like a Head (that Monkees/Jack Nicholson 1968 psychedelic comedy) for the junior geek set.

I’m sure entire college dorms at the time were speaking in English accents and making silly-sounding commentary on everyday objects as if they were knights and peasants. “Oi! A utility knife! You can’t get very far in life if you don’t have a utility knife!”

What has struck me now, whenever I view it, is how varied it is, a patchwork of differing styles, skits, and approaches to comedy, and how eerie some of the cinematography is between each sketch, all winter trees, gray stone castles, and mists and moors, adding a creepy, overarching, mythical character. I used to think that these bits were included only for the cast to skew them; but with time, I think the mythical bits hold up, cliched as they are. They say to me, legend, history and awe still exist even as you mock them, and they will always be here while those who make light of them come and go. It’s a melancholy message considering some of the cast has since passed  (Graham Chapman, Terry Jones) and the others are long past their physical comedy days.

On a more light-hearted note, my favorite bit is the song-and-dance Camelot number where the knights soft-shoe on a table where a feast has been set up, as peasants ignore them; you can hear the squeaks and crunches of their armor (the sound design in this film is really, really good) and at one time a knight steps on a stray chicken which goes, “Urrck!” The manic intensity of this bit, coupled with the realism of filming in a historic castle, takes it to a level beyond mere absurd humor: it’s history standing up to, and defying, its mockers. Its Monty Python vs. The Whole of Existence.

My least favorite bit is the man-eating rabbit. That was just stupid. And the Castle Anthrax bits haven’t held up well either.

But, on the whole, I could watch it again and again, even as it wasn’t made to be watched that way; VCRs, cable TV, subscription services didn’t exist back then, and likely the makers thought they’d be lucky if it showed up at film festivals every once in a while. How wrong they were!

But how nice for us.